Way back in the shallow end
Coming- of- age drama never feels fully engaged
You know why The Graduate is a classic? Because it was honest: Benjamin was a selfish dick.
A pure manifestation of generational angst and insecurity in the face of the looming, plastic, capitalist world of grownups, Benjamin sat at the bottom of his parents’ pool as a gesture of resistance.
He wanted to revert to the innocent state of the watery womb, where voices are mumbles and intention is a pure abstract, instead of engaging with his perceived responsibilities in the adult world.
Yet, where Benjamin was seduced by his adult destiny all the same, thanks to the timeless character of Mrs. Robinson, the young man at the heart of Jim Rash and Nat Faxon’s coming- of- age story is eager to grow up.
There’s only one problem: Duncan is surrounded by 40- year- old babies.
Whether it’s his mom’s new boyfriend Trent ( Steve Carell), the divorced dad who looks at Duncan like a three- legged dog, the boozy next- door neighbour in mom jeans ( Allison Janney), or the friendly couple with the fancy boat and roving eyes ( Amanda Peet and Rob Corddry), just about every adult in Duncan’s summer circle are immature and self- absorbed.
He has no decent role model to define his truly doughy identity until he meets Owen ( Sam Rockwell), a childlike man who runs the local water park.
Seeing Duncan sit by himself one day, Owen decides to take the lost little gosling under his water wings and teach him a thing or two about becoming a man.
On the surface these manly lessons of wisdom are pathetic: how to ogle and objectify women in bikinis, how to be a jerk at the pool and how to wear the pair of jeans your mother bought for you at Costco.
Yet a little bit deeper down we can see there’s a real brotherly bond developing between Owen and Duncan that heals them both, and this is where screenwriter- directors Rash and Faxon could have really scored some huge points.
All they needed to do was give Rockwell and James a couple of tender moments together that didn’t feel like a Big Brothers training video, or a Dane Cook monologue.
Rockwell is clearly capable of delivering these subtle turns of character because he’s done it in everything from Seven Psychopaths to Moon. He’s a natural charmer.
Liam James, who has a recurring role in the Vancouver- spun series The Killing, also has demonstrable ability. Watching this kid walk around with half- clenched fists and sloping shoulders makes us feel just how uncomfortable he is in his own skin.
James’s command of his physicality alone is a treat because he often transcends the dull words on the page and the TV- style direction that continually grinds this movie into the ground.
The truth is, unlike the young underwritten female characters in this movie ( specifically AnnaSophia Robb), Duncan is not all that interesting. He’s not an artist, or a poet. He’s not gay and has no special talents. He is completely average and so are his problems — which is the only reason why this movie is worth watching because it lets us celebrate the mediocre without shame.
Instead of trying to inflate sadly generic characters with interesting dramatic quirks or criminal habits, Rash and Faxon go out of their way to fetishize normalcy the same way Trent fetishizes his 1970 Buick Estate station wagon.
We’ve seen every curve and every tail light in this assembly line coming- of- age story before, and the filmmakers do not care. They simply buff it out with some high- gloss performers, put it in drive, and let the automatic choke do the rest.
The result is not a fast ride or even an interesting one. It’s a very slow tour of the parking lot of pubescence where girls are kind of scary and moms can still make everything OK.
Rockwell is the only character with charisma, which makes him the only Benjamin in the bunch — and the only character willing to question the status quo.
Owen is the true kid, and he helps Duncan release his trapped inner child by letting him wet his pants and play in the pool.
But Duncan begins and ends the movie as a middling cipher — an ill- defined clump of clay with nothing to say.
When Benjamin sat at the bottom of the pool, we could tell he wanted to scream obscenities at the top of his lungs.
Duncan, who doesn’t even get his scene below the waterline despite the poster’s promise, doesn’t seem smart enough to conjure an opinion of any kind.
With such a dull hero, The Way, Way Back never musters any sense of urgency — probably the most critical ingredient in any comingofage story because urgency defines the constant drama of the teen years — and without it, the whole thing feels flaccid and unengaged.
More urgently, it never feels honest, ensuring The Way, Way Back remains stuck in the shallow end with all the other weak swimmers and old waders looking to escape the heat with a watery dip.