Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Nat Faxon and Jim Rash receive heaps of well-earned acclaim for writing the 2011 Alexander Payne film The Descendants. The movie was nominated for a slew of Oscars and the pair even took home the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. By any metric, The Descendants is an exceptional film, but it’s actually not the duo’s best movie. That particular honor belongs to their 2013 coming-of-age comedy The Way Way Back, aka the best summer film you’ve never seen.
The tender dramedy centers on the unexpected friendship that develops between 14-year-old Duncan (Liam James) and charismatic underachiever Owen (Sam Rockwell). Fractured family in tow, introverted Duncan arrives at a small seaside town near Cape Cod when he meets extroverted Owen, who’s the manager of the local water park. The two embark upon a Mr. Miyagi/Daniel LaRusso type mentorship, but instead of Crane Kicks and egregious exploitation of free labor, Owen gives Duncan a job and actually pays him because you can’t cover the electric bill with a karate chop and a smile.
The film is bursting with small, genuine moments that through the 20/20 clarity of hindsight we now understand are really the most important moments life has to offer. All the classic coming-of-age staples are present and accounted for: young love, newfound independence, painstaking awkwardness, discovering a sense of belonging. It’s a story we’ve seen before, but The Way Way Back’s dedication to earnestness makes it feel like it’s the very first time this particular journey has been traveled. We not only get to see the emotional maturation of young Duncan, but Owen — portrayed with winsome gusto by the always magnetic Rockwell — decides to check out that whole responsibility thing he’s been hearing so much about in order to impress Maya Rudolph’s Caitlin.
Oh, that’s right. I said Maya freaking Rudolph. Stacked doesn’t even begin to describe this cast.
Toni Collette, Allison Janney, AnnaSophia Robb, Rob Corddry, and Amanda Peet also appear alongside the aforementioned Faxon and Rash. While the entire cast is predictably terrific, Steve Carell’s portrayal of Duncan’s mom’s uber jackhole of a boyfriend, Trent, is terrifyingly on point. Trent possesses a type of covert deplorability that manifests itself in subtle ways like rolling your eyes at a baby, being sarcastic to a dog, or humming the first few notes of a Smash Mouth’s “All Star” over and over and over again. If you’re gonna hum the first line, you better damn well continue with the “I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed” part too, TRENT! Carell’s character helps to raise the emotional stakes while also giving our young hero a machine to rage against.
The Way Way Back is all the nostalgia of adolescence without actually being forced to deal with the whole awkward imbroglio of puberty all over again. Also, you gotta respect a movie poster that’s just a bunch of adults being like, “We’re way too busy being pensive to care if a teenager willfully drowns in a three foot pool of water.”
“We’ve all been there,” indeed.
Faxon and Rash’s pristine script oozes sincerity while capturing the essence of that fleeting period in your life when the line between adolescence and adulthood becomes too hazy to differentiate. The Way Way Back is a cinematic charmer and much like that first transformative summer in which you finally catch a glimpse of the person you might someday become, you’ll never want it to end.
