Growing up tale shines
The Way, Way Back rarely puts a foot wrong, writes Steve Kilgallon.
STEVE CARELL peers into his rear-view mirror in the very first shot of The Way, Way Back and it’s immediately apparent that this will not be his standard cinematic outing. Slowly, deliberately, he prods stepson Duncan to rate himself out of 10. Duncan, reluctantly, suggests he might be a six. No, says Carrell, viciously, still looking into the mirror for a reaction, and listing the reasons, he’s just a three.
And so begins 14-year-old Duncan’s awful summer vacation in the Hamptons with his new stepdad Trent (Carell), Trent’s cranky daughter, and his own, painfully lost mother (Toni Collette). Fortunately for Duncan, as life in the holiday home disintegrates, he finds an escape at the ageing Water Wizz leisure park, where the owner, fasttalking man-child Owen (Sam Rockwell) offers employment, solace, friendship and a rather unlikely coming-of-age mentor.
This juxtaposition of worlds works rather well. Director/writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (this is their debut as directors, although they wrote the George Clooney film Descendants) make the effort to surround Collette and Carell with some talented actors and decent characters, not least a quite brilliant turn from Allison Janney as Trent’s neighbour, drunken divorcee Betty, and so manage to expertly skewer the desperation of Trent’s group of pissed 40-somethings trying to recreate their twenties. Janney is not alone in embracing a break from typecast; Carell plays flawed well, not least in the pivotal scenes where Collette begins to realise quite what a shit he is.
Then the mood gains a necessary lift as we enter another strange throwback world, but this the pleasant, sunny-everyday retro of the waterpark. Given some of the best speeches this side of Bill Murray, Rockwell can’t fail to shine; Faxon and Rash have just as much fun here playing his offsiders, the sunny Roddy and the depressed Lewis.
Finally, of course, the two realities collide, in a perfectly judged conclusion to a film that rarely puts a foot wrong. It’s consistently funny without ever being trite, a considerable rarity, and doesn’t waste a minute of screentime; what it leaves you with is a desire for Faxon and Rash to spend no time savouring the certain critical adulation, and get on to write another.