The Way, Way Back (12A.)
Directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash.
Starring Liam James, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Amanda Peet, AnnaSophia Robb, Alison Janney and Toni Collette. 103 mins.
Duncan (Liam James) is a sullen, moody teenager. He’s inert and apathetic, and though his anti-socialness is due to a crippling shyness he’s not a figure you’d expect to emphasise with. But before the end of the opening scene my heart had gone out to him because this poor lamb is suffering the worse fate that could befall a teenager – his mum’s new boyfriend is Steve Carell and they are going to spend the whole summer in his beach house.
The opening scene, a discussion between the pair during the car journey up there as Duncan’s mother is asleep, is an excruciating piece of comedy with Carell asking him to say what number he would rate himself as on a scale of one to ten. After seven seasons playing the US equivalent of David Brent I suppose I should credit his skill at creating these deluded go-getting monsters, but he is so hatefully smarmy in his other love-me performances that I can no longer discriminate between the monsters on screen and the man who performs them. Every time Carell calls him “buddy,” I felt my fist involuntarily clench.
Improbably things begin to pick up for Duncan. Despite being a complete wet blanket people begin to warm to him including the next door neighbour’s daughter (Robb) and Sam Rockwell who is the live wire boss of the local water park. He takes him on as a kind of maker-up project – he’s determined to find the living creature within this monosyllabic blob.
Duncan can’t believe his luck and neither can we. Rockwell is very much a poor man’s Bill Murray but a top notch poor man’s Bill Murray and when he breezes into the film it is like that Oz moment when black and white becomes colour. One moment we are trapped in a heartfelt coming of age character comedy, the next we are in an actual comedy that closely resembles Caddyshack.
The film then jumps back and forth between the two films. Adventureland covered this kind of thing rather better and it is almost as if that film had been torn in half with the comedy bits and character bits divided up and put into neat orderly separate halves.
Writer/ directors Faxon and Rash are comedy actors whose main credit is winning the Oscar with Alexander Payne for the script for The Descendants. Their first bash at directing suggests they still have a lot to work on. The tone is all over the place but engagingly so. Though it is clearly set in the modern day (they have mobile phones and Rockwell makes a joke about the Footloose remake) it often seems to be drifting off into coming of age period piece. Some of the scenes look unbelievably amateurish but even these work in its favour; strengthening the association with of 80s summer vacation comedies. You’re never quite sure of it, but it’s engaging and likeable.
Directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash.
Starring Liam James, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Amanda Peet, AnnaSophia Robb, Alison Janney and Toni Collette. 103 mins.
Duncan (Liam James) is a sullen, moody teenager. He’s inert and apathetic, and though his anti-socialness is due to a crippling shyness he’s not a figure you’d expect to emphasise with. But before the end of the opening scene my heart had gone out to him because this poor lamb is suffering the worse fate that could befall a teenager – his mum’s new boyfriend is Steve Carell and they are going to spend the whole summer in his beach house.
The opening scene, a discussion between the pair during the car journey up there as Duncan’s mother is asleep, is an excruciating piece of comedy with Carell asking him to say what number he would rate himself as on a scale of one to ten. After seven seasons playing the US equivalent of David Brent I suppose I should credit his skill at creating these deluded go-getting monsters, but he is so hatefully smarmy in his other love-me performances that I can no longer discriminate between the monsters on screen and the man who performs them. Every time Carell calls him “buddy,” I felt my fist involuntarily clench.
Improbably things begin to pick up for Duncan. Despite being a complete wet blanket people begin to warm to him including the next door neighbour’s daughter (Robb) and Sam Rockwell who is the live wire boss of the local water park. He takes him on as a kind of maker-up project – he’s determined to find the living creature within this monosyllabic blob.
Duncan can’t believe his luck and neither can we. Rockwell is very much a poor man’s Bill Murray but a top notch poor man’s Bill Murray and when he breezes into the film it is like that Oz moment when black and white becomes colour. One moment we are trapped in a heartfelt coming of age character comedy, the next we are in an actual comedy that closely resembles Caddyshack.
The film then jumps back and forth between the two films. Adventureland covered this kind of thing rather better and it is almost as if that film had been torn in half with the comedy bits and character bits divided up and put into neat orderly separate halves.
Writer/ directors Faxon and Rash are comedy actors whose main credit is winning the Oscar with Alexander Payne for the script for The Descendants. Their first bash at directing suggests they still have a lot to work on. The tone is all over the place but engagingly so. Though it is clearly set in the modern day (they have mobile phones and Rockwell makes a joke about the Footloose remake) it often seems to be drifting off into coming of age period piece. Some of the scenes look unbelievably amateurish but even these work in its favour; strengthening the association with of 80s summer vacation comedies. You’re never quite sure of it, but it’s engaging and likeable.
