This film is the first directorial effort by Jim Rash and Nat Faxon. Both have done quite a bit of work in other film-related areas in their careers, especially in acting. However, the two also won the Academy Award for writing Alexander Payne's "The Descendants" (starring George Clooney) not too long ago and "The Way Way Back" shows us how prolific and talented they are as they directed, wrote and produced the film and also appear in smaller roles here and successfully deliver comic relief. I quite loved "The Descendants", yet I managed not to get my hopes too far up with this one. The result was me being very positively surprised as I ended up liking it pretty much the same like "The Descendants".
The lead actor here is Liam James. He does a fine job with a character that is, despite his age and his shyness, possibly the most normal character in the entire movie, certainly more normal than many of the other characters herein that are twice or even thrice his age. As the cast includes actors that have been working for decades, it's even more impressive how James manages to be on par with them and how he's never in danger of being overshadowed by the likes of Rockwell, Rudolph, Carell, Collette or Janney. Certainly his work in the film "2012" or as a regular on several TV shows (such as Psych) has helped him a lot in gaining the necessary experience to carry this movie and give us one of the finest 2013 portrayals in a coming-of-age movie. The film itself runs for slightly over 100 minutes and, even if it was very good, still felt like it had a lot more to offer than it finally did. That includes among other things the story of Susanna and her mother which seemed truly interesting, even if we only got very small portions from the grand picture behind it and it could certainly justify a spin-off.
Beyond that, the film is a big Sam Rockwell showcase. He basically steals the show from everybody the moment he enters the screen in a hilarious scene involving the computer game classic Pac-Man. From that moment on, we are watching him turn more and more turn into a father figure to the main character with every minute. Rockwell breathes life into a pretty unique character who's quite a force of nature, but still has quite a few flaws, which make him even more interesting to watch. He's a crucial figure in this year's maybe most successful film about a character coming of age. It has lots of drama, but still equally much heart and humor. As much as I'm concerned, I sometimes need a while, maybe even up to half an hour, to really get into a movie, but this one had me on the edge of my seat since minute one when the characters of James, Collette and Carell are in the car and talk about grading people. It was quite a sad situation already, but also one that perfectly introduced the trio's characteristics to the audience very early on. And this grading process was referenced nicely near the end with the "friend of the 3"-scene. Excellent way in closing the circle. The final scene is back in the car again, so it's a bit of a framework for everything that happened in between, but the situation has clearly changed position-wise and character-wise at that point due to everything that happened in-between.
All in all, I very much recommend this movie. It's a pretty entertaining 100 minute-dramedy. The comedy is occasionally subtle, but often also very much in your face as a huge part of the film takes place at a water park which obviously means lots of fun with squirt guns, water slides and splashing everywhere. One of my favorite funny scenes was when the heavy black kid went down the slide to dissolve the children stuck in there. This one was completely hilarious. It's not a perfect film, for example I didn't like the scene that much where the protagonist meets this group of dancers with the crowds around them and was told to get them away and that Rockwell's character of course foresaw the unlikely development that the kid would sort of join them, despite his very deep-rooted shyness still at that point, and the whole changing positions in the water slide subplot wasn't half as effective as it aimed to be for me, but that's just minor criticisms, which, by no means, should keep you from seeing this movie.
The lead actor here is Liam James. He does a fine job with a character that is, despite his age and his shyness, possibly the most normal character in the entire movie, certainly more normal than many of the other characters herein that are twice or even thrice his age. As the cast includes actors that have been working for decades, it's even more impressive how James manages to be on par with them and how he's never in danger of being overshadowed by the likes of Rockwell, Rudolph, Carell, Collette or Janney. Certainly his work in the film "2012" or as a regular on several TV shows (such as Psych) has helped him a lot in gaining the necessary experience to carry this movie and give us one of the finest 2013 portrayals in a coming-of-age movie. The film itself runs for slightly over 100 minutes and, even if it was very good, still felt like it had a lot more to offer than it finally did. That includes among other things the story of Susanna and her mother which seemed truly interesting, even if we only got very small portions from the grand picture behind it and it could certainly justify a spin-off.
Beyond that, the film is a big Sam Rockwell showcase. He basically steals the show from everybody the moment he enters the screen in a hilarious scene involving the computer game classic Pac-Man. From that moment on, we are watching him turn more and more turn into a father figure to the main character with every minute. Rockwell breathes life into a pretty unique character who's quite a force of nature, but still has quite a few flaws, which make him even more interesting to watch. He's a crucial figure in this year's maybe most successful film about a character coming of age. It has lots of drama, but still equally much heart and humor. As much as I'm concerned, I sometimes need a while, maybe even up to half an hour, to really get into a movie, but this one had me on the edge of my seat since minute one when the characters of James, Collette and Carell are in the car and talk about grading people. It was quite a sad situation already, but also one that perfectly introduced the trio's characteristics to the audience very early on. And this grading process was referenced nicely near the end with the "friend of the 3"-scene. Excellent way in closing the circle. The final scene is back in the car again, so it's a bit of a framework for everything that happened in between, but the situation has clearly changed position-wise and character-wise at that point due to everything that happened in-between.
All in all, I very much recommend this movie. It's a pretty entertaining 100 minute-dramedy. The comedy is occasionally subtle, but often also very much in your face as a huge part of the film takes place at a water park which obviously means lots of fun with squirt guns, water slides and splashing everywhere. One of my favorite funny scenes was when the heavy black kid went down the slide to dissolve the children stuck in there. This one was completely hilarious. It's not a perfect film, for example I didn't like the scene that much where the protagonist meets this group of dancers with the crowds around them and was told to get them away and that Rockwell's character of course foresaw the unlikely development that the kid would sort of join them, despite his very deep-rooted shyness still at that point, and the whole changing positions in the water slide subplot wasn't half as effective as it aimed to be for me, but that's just minor criticisms, which, by no means, should keep you from seeing this movie.