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How entertaining? ★★★☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 26 August 2013
This article is a review of THE WAY WAY BACK. |
“Another night of drinking alone I was going to kill myself,” Betty (Allison Janney)
Writer-director-actors Jim Rash and Nat Faxon co-adapted THE DESCENDANTS with Alexander Payne, and won an Oscar for it. Overrated yes, but moving and well acted. You should hopefully know Rash better as Dean Pelton in one of the consummate sitcoms in the world right now, COMMUNITY. The duo brings comedic vitality in spurts to their feature directing debut. And that is largely thanks to Sam Rockwell both saving and elevating this holiday-set dramedy. The non-funny interludes feel undernourished.
Writer-director-actors Jim Rash and Nat Faxon co-adapted THE DESCENDANTS with Alexander Payne, and won an Oscar for it. Overrated yes, but moving and well acted. You should hopefully know Rash better as Dean Pelton in one of the consummate sitcoms in the world right now, COMMUNITY. The duo brings comedic vitality in spurts to their feature directing debut. And that is largely thanks to Sam Rockwell both saving and elevating this holiday-set dramedy. The non-funny interludes feel undernourished.
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The coming-of-age flick needs a new label perhaps. How about the ‘growing pains’ subgenre? The focus of THE WAY WAY BACK is unhappy 14 year old Duncan (Liam James). Left with no choice by his mother Pam (Toni Collette), he has to sojourn with her boyfriend of a year Trent (Steve Carell) and his obnoxious daughter. Matters kick off in a discomforting way. Duncan has relegated himself to the rear of the car, à la Rango in RANGO, but there’s no inadvertent escape. While the women snooze, Trent conveys his disappointment in his potential stepson by ranking him as a three out of ten. The sad sack Carell is pleasingly absent. In his place is a douche-meister. It’s rare for him to play someone who by the end of the picture isn’t begging the audience to like him.
“They called me a ‘see you next Tuesday’ to my face,” Betty
Once at Trent’s holiday home we meet next-door neighbour Janney, reprising her in-your-face role from AWAY WE GO. Duncan’s moroseness slips briefly as the spies her daughter, Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb). Looking to occupy his time, Duncan stumbles across a shabby, but characterful, water park run by the life of the party (and film), Owen (Rockwell). Susanna and Owen prove to be his respite, and Owen takes him under his wing and slowly out of his shell. Whenever Rockwell is in the scene, THE WAY WAY BACK entertains. However, in between his joyous shtick is leaden melodrama – revelations and arguments and passive aggression. The movie founders then, so much so that one wonders what the filmmakers were attempting to convey. Yes, a shy young man will gain confidence and self worth if a caring father figure role model is present; though there’s no realism, proceedings are the wish-fulfilment of a life changing holiday. There is something more interesting going on with the way women are treated by their men; unfortunately that is not explored enough.
There were kernels of potential. THE WAY WAY BACK only provides a hotchpotch divertissement
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