Devoid of the wrongheaded sentimentality of the typical coming-of-age movie, The Way, Way Back claws back to the little moments of adolescence with a surehanded robustness. From its dynamite opening scene to its gleaming, touching last shot, it infuses the viewer with his or her own recollective pangs of identification with its 14-year-old protagonist’s rocky road to self-discovery.
The misfit, inert Duncan (Liam James) sits in the very back section of the station wagon of his mom’s boyfriend, Trent (Steve Carell). Trent nervingly asks the kid to “rate yourself from one to ten.” When the stunned Duncan at first doesn’t answer and then lets out a soft sheepish “Six'” Trent is quick to respond “I think you’re a three,” a response that will be repeated back to Trent in a far more disapproving context later in the film. Duncan and Trent are on the way to a summer shore house likely somewhere in Massachusetts, along with Duncan’s timid mom, Pam (Toni Collette) and Trent’s teenage daughter, who treats Duncan as if he were an obnoxious vermin.
We’re introduced to a wacky neighbor (an excellent Allison Janney) who’s a boozy motormouth who’s about half as witty as she thinks she is, and a couple (Amanda Pete and Rob Corduroy) who serve as enablers for Trent and Pam to channel their own inner adolescence in terms of acting silly and shallow. This sets up the need for Duncan to get away from them as soon as possible. It’s a need exacerbated by his near-catatonic attempt to socialize with his peers at the beach.
Enter Sam Rockwell as Owen, who comes to be Duncan’s mentor once he runs off to a water park, The Water Whizz, where Owen works. Rockwell puts a sizzling and brazen sheen on every scene he’s in. His rough-and-tumble empathy is the polar opposite of Trent’s smarmy pomposity. Carell, refreshingly playing against type, is just right, as is the always savvy Collette, as a mom, who, like her son, also must overcome an inability to assert herself. Side plots involving Duncan and Janney’s daughter, and Owen and co-worker Maya Rudolph wisely aren’t overdone.
Co-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (recent Oscar winners as screenwriters for The Descendants) appear as comical Water Whizz employees but it’s Rockwell who’s gut-busting hilarious. The Way, Way Back is refreshingly light when it needs to be while making its deeper point seamlessly. The fine afterglow of its symbolic double-entendre ending lingers with a singular resonance.
4.5 Sam Rockwells (out of 5)