thoughts on The Way, Way Back

Summer. Man. When I was a kid, it was setting up the little kiddie pool in the backyard and taking my swimsuit everywhere I went, because my friends probably had their kiddie pools set up, too. As a tween and young teen, it was riding my bike all morning, swimming at the local pool all afternoon, and then sometimes going back in the evening for the night swim. Starting the summer after my junior year in high school, I pretty much always had a summer job, and as an adult, I usually teach for at least part of the summer, but still: summers are different. You take up new hobbies. You watch different stuff on TV.  You find yourself rarely seeing some of the people you normally hang out with, you hang out with others way more than normal, and you usually meet at least a few new people.  You go to cookouts and go swimming. You drink beer from a can outdoors. You watch baseball games and go see the fireworks on the 4th of July.

In The Way, Way Back, fourteen-year-old Duncan's (Liam James's) summer includes a lot of the normal summer things.  He goes to cookouts.  He watches the fireworks.  He spends some time in the water.  Unfortunately, he has to do all of these things while getting used to Trent (Steve Carell), his mother's (Toni Collette's) boyfriend.  Trent is the type of guy who rates Duncan a three on a scale of one to ten, right to his face-- and acts like he's just given him helpful information that he can use to improve himself.  He gets militant about the rules of Candyland, even though they're all way too old for the game and are only doing it to kill time while it's raining, anyway.  He says and does little things that aren't terrible in theory (reminding Duncan to clear his own plate from the table, requiring Duncan to wear a life jacket when they're out on a boat); however, because Duncan is the only one he singles out in these types of ways, it comes across like he's picking on him, or trying to embarrass him, or simply trying to show him who's boss.

Duncan finds refuge in a summer job at a water park called the Water Wizz, which he takes secretly while staying with his mother, Trent, and Trent's daughter, Stephanie (Zoe Levin), at Trent's beach house. His mom and Trent wonder where he goes all day and sometimes seem mildly annoyed when they can't find him, but they're too busy partying with the neighbors (a couple played by Rob Corddry and Amanda Peet and a recently divorced woman played by Allison Janney) to pay much attention.  At the water park, he meets the manager, Owen (Sam Rockwell), a man who is maybe around the same age as Trent and who becomes something of a surrogate father figure over the summer.  He also eventually gets to know Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb), his neighbor for the summer and the only person who cares enough to actually investigate where he disappears to all day.

I really enjoyed this, everyone.  As I alluded to earlier, it just captures the feeling of summer perfectly-- that feeling that even when things are going badly, they're going badly in a different way than they might be going during the rest of the year, just because circumstances are so different.  Duncan starts off as such an awkward kid that he barely even talks to anyone; the thing is, though, he's sweet, and he's game for pretty much whatever, as becomes obvious during a scene where he is sent to break up a crowd that has congregated around a spontaneous dance demonstration at the water park and winds up learning some moves that earn him the nickname "Pop-N-Lock" for the rest of the summer.  He gains confidence under Owen's wing, and Owen perhaps grows up a little watching out for him.  There are some moments of pure joy in this movie that center around the types of things that, again, can only happen in summer-- an ambush with a water gun that quickly turns into a full-scale water fight; a race to see if it is possible for someone to pass the person going down the water slide ahead of them.  There are also some really nice moments between Owen and Caitlin (Maya Rudolph), who manages the water park with him, and Duncan and Susanna, his summer crush.  The fact that Duncan may very well never see Owen or Susanna again after the summer's end doesn't even matter, because, as we've all experienced, the stuff that happens in the summer might not necessarily be permanent...but it's important.