Welcome to Family Dysfunction
Do you
remember sitting in “The Way Way Back” when third row backwards facing seats
were first installed in family station wagons? Nat Faxon and Jim Rash have
recreated the emotional and physical isolation of that terrible place as a
metaphor for the dilemma faced by awkward, teenaged Duncan (Liam James) as he
begins his fourteenth summer.
The movie
opens with Duncan trapped alone back there while his mother sleeps in the front
seat next to her new boyfriend (Steve Carell) who is peppering him with
humiliating questions. The distance between them is a monstrous mile. They are
heading to Trent’s beach house for a whole summer of testing. Can Duncan adjust
to the new man in his mother’s life? Can they become a family?
The director
delivers the worst of the movie first. By midpoint it would be surprising if we
weren’t in passionate revolt against Steve Carrell’s Trent who is a cold, dense
and unappealing zero. The next door neighbor who lives close enough to reach out
and touch Trent’s house is ever present and overbearing but because she is
played by Allison Janney, we keep hoping for the best. Add an awful couple who
keeps dropping by for loud, alcohol fueled evenings of too loud laughter and
dull witted conversation and the audience could be forgiven for leaving.
To avoid this
dysfunctional family disaster, Duncan rides his bike each day to the nearby
somewhat shabby Wizz Water Park where he has the unexpected good luck of running
into lazy manager Owen and Owen’s co-manager and soul mate Caitlin (a terrific
Maya Rudolph). Owen gives Duncan a staff shirt and a job, and the summer
changes. So does the movie. The odd movie begins to slip into our own emotions
as the boy – inch by slow inch – gains confidence from the friendships and new
responsibilities at the water park. The irrepressible Owen sees that the boy
simply needs encouragement to become himself.
Meanwhile,
back at the beach cottage the family melodrama continues in serial eruptions.
Though Tony Collette’s Pam is clearly a better human being than her shallow
summer companions, she’s been dumped once before and she’s scared to stand up
for herself. She too feels trapped.
On the other
hand, the water park managers – even Lewis (Jim Rash) - morph into bedrock for
Duncan. From there, he dares to grow up. If directors Faxon and Rash spent too
long on the awful Steve Carell, they atone for that mistake at the park. This is
a first you get mad, then you laugh, then you cry movie. Sam Rockwell’s Owen
knows exactly when to drop his own comic aggression to lift the fog that clouds
the boy’s adolescent understanding of the life he thinks he can’t change. He
hands Duncan the tools for the job, the boy responds, and finally he ends up
again in the Way Way Back. But this time he is not alone.
Copyright (c) Illusion