The Way, Way Back 2013
This was a blind buy from Dollar Tree. So blind I had never even heard of the movie, but not blind enough not to look up and see it got pretty positive reviews. Reading some of those reviews after watching I think people felt like the setup has been done plenty of times (Meatballs goes to the beach maybe) but it still earns good reviews for the good characters and sense of humor.
The movie centers on a teenaged boy going on Summer vacation with his divorced mother, her boyfriend, and the boyfriend’s cute but stuck up daughter. The kid is shy and awkward and the boyfriend is a jerk to him and the daughter calls him perv for trying to make eye contact. At the beach the parents run into other parents who also behave badly and the kid is miserable. He meets a nice goofball of a guy played by Sam Rockwell in the Bill Murray role who manages a rundown water park. The cast is uniformly very good, but maybe sometimes overplaying their types. It is not a great movie, but fun to watch the kid start to come out of his shell, a little like Almost Famous. It captures that time when a kid can dip a toe in the swimming pool of adult life and realize he isn’t that much different from them. Sam Rockwell is the standout, but the movie doesn’t work without Liam James’ performance as the kid. In the end it is a warm, fuzzy, sweet story about growing up that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Written: 28 Nov 2018
Owned on: Blu-ray, Digital