The Way Way Back (Nat Faxon, Jim Rash)

[Thirdmango]

IMDB

[Thirdmango]

Either going to see this today or sometime this week. Meant to see it at sundance and then couldn't go last minute.

[wigwam]

:|

[Thirdmango]

I totally disagree with wigwam. I absolutely loved this movie. I will say if you're going in thinking this is a Steve Carrell driven project then you'll be disappointed, he is probably the biggest star in the movie but not all the focal character or focal tone of the movie. This is a good follow up to The Descendants and has a lot of the same tones to the movie. I also really like the juxtaposition of the beach house with the water park. I love Jim Rash and Nat Faxon and they are all over this piece. It is a little awkward in that most of the movie is fueled by some less talented teenage actors, but the writing is superb and helps them through the rough patches.

[Ivan Drago]

Ooof. It does have the same tones as The Descendants, but while it's funny in parts, as a whole, its humor doesn't gel with the tone, in my opinion. I also thought characters developed suddenly, the young leads were unconvincing, and I hated the main character. I love Jim Rash too, but this was RiDEANculously disappointing.

[Fezzik]

I got exactly what I wanted out of this movie - a relatable main character (if you hated him, Ivan, you wouldve hated me when I was a teen. I felt that kid's entire struggle because I was so much like him), a smart and funny script, and some charming performances by Sam Rockwell, Anna SophiaRobb and company.

The lead kid was not that great an actor, but luckily everyone else around him kind of picks up the slack.

I loved it. It had the right amount of warm and fuzzy to overcome the hangover his summer movie season has been.

[eternity]

This is one of the most cringe-inducing movies I've ever seen. Not bad.

[Irish]

Terrible and packed with 1,000 cliches from better movies.

They forgot to make the lead kid likeable at all or give him any kind of goal. Even if it's a cheesy goal (win the surfing contest at the end of the summer!) it gives the story something to build toward. (The climax of this movie isn't even about the kid!)

All he does is mope around. That may be true to life for a fourteen year old, but it makes for a lousy protagonist in a movie. (Why would Sam Rockwell and the teen hottie next door want to spend more than thirty seconds with this kid? He's a total blank, never does or says anything remotely interesting.)

I wish they had made the movie about the water park and left the family on the cutting room floor.

Edit: Why hire Rob Cordry and Amanda Peet and then give them nothing to do? The adults in this movie are miserable creatures and I don't blame the kid for constantly wanting to get the hell away from them.

[Henry Gale]

When I feel more enamoured and grateful for the company of Sam Rockwell and AnnaSophia Robb than the main character of a movie (whose performance seems to confuse "charismatically awkward and shy" for "unbearably bland and inert"), then something is seriously wrong.

Those two, Rudolph, Collette -- and even the actors that aren't given nearly enough to do like Janney, Peet, Corrdry and Carell -- are all really fine, and I really like Faxton and Rash from their on screen work (here too) and their Descendants script, but man... this really didn't do much for me at all. Rockwell makes everything better like he always does, but his great performance is doing so much more than the movie should require him to. He's almost forced to tie together and pull the weight for seemingly every storyline he comes in contact with, all of which seem undercooked or lack legitimate stakes to really invest in. The big emotional waterslide moment is a big... "Oh, okay?" climax.

It's a case of assuming I'd love a movie because of how much I enjoy things spiritually similar to it (even as recently as Adventureland, which is just endlessly rewatchable and lovely), but there's just nothing interesting about the lead character here. He is a complete blank slate who also makes it impossible to project yourself onto when he does things you could never sympathize with or relate to.

Well intentioned and intermittently funny with some nice performances, but so off the mark everywhere else. Simply not enough well-observed and interesting character drama or even aesthetic intrigue to save it from its roteness.

**

tl;dr: More or less what Ivan and Irish said.