The Way, Way Back (3/5 Stars)

I am going to say something rather mean a little bit later. So watch for that.

“The Way, Way Back” was inspired by an experience of Jim Rash, one half of the writing/directing team behind the movie (the other writer/director is Nat Faxon). When he was a youngster of 14 his family spent a summer at his stepfather’s beach house. On the way there his stepfather told him to rate himself between a 1 and a 10. Little Jim answered 6 thinking it was a safe number. His stepfather disagreed and said he was more like a 3 and that he should use the summer as an opportunity to get that number up. What a dick thing to say and apparently this entire movie is a sort of cinematic revenge against Jim Rash’s stepfather. The main character Duncan (Liam James) is a youngster of 14 who is insulted by his stepfather in exactly the same way in the first scene of the movie. Now I will say the mean thing. Based on the movie I saw, I think Duncan is about a 3 too.

There is an impressive cast in this movie. Steve Carell and Toni Collete play Duncan’s parents. Next-door is the hard-drinking town gossip, Allison Janney and her conveniently attractive teenage daughter played by AnnaSophia Robb. Rob Corddry and Amanda Peet hang around as friends of friends. And right down the road is a water park staffed by Sam Rockwell, Maya Rudolph, Jim Rash, and Nat Faxon. This is as good a cast that anyone can have for a comedy. But Steve Carell and Rob Corddry, seasoned comedians, are not really given a chance to tell jokes. Sam Rockwell, an actor who can’t be uninteresting, could be giving a seminar on why scenes of dialogue don’t work when only one person is trying. Maya Rudolph continues her lengthy movie streak of severely unwritten roles. And AnnaSophia Robb perhaps has the hardest job of all but I will get to that later. The main problem is that the character Duncan is in every scene. And Duncan is a truly sad and boring presence. He has no interests or hobbies. He has nothing to say. He is a truly pathetic dancer. His situation with his father and especially the first scene engenders him a great deal of sympathy, but as a movie character this can only go so far. At some point he has to prove himself on the merits of his character. Instead the movie situates the kid in the midst of cool people that have no particular reason to hang out with him and have him win certain battles that can come off as contrived. It’s like watching a youth soccer league give a trophy for “Most Improved” to the worst player on the last place team. It is an exercise in self-esteem generation with no concern of whether it is deserved.

I want to make a point of comparison here so it doesn’t seem like I’m just bashing pale emo kids. In 2008 a movie called “Role Models” came out. It starred Paul Rudd as a man that was sentenced to 100 hours of community service as a Big Brother. He gets a kid named Augie, played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Augie is a pale nerdy emo kid with a stepfather and a mother that think he is a loser. So it is basically the same sort of story. However in “Role Models” Augie is given a hobby. He enthusiastically participates in a real life medieval role-playing game named LAIRE. He has made his cape and costume. He is practicing his sword moves. He knows so much about it that it is successfully demonstrated that he is involved in something very fun and interesting. So by the end of the movie when Paul Rudd gets mad at Augie’s parents and says he would be “psyched” to have a kid like Augie, the scene really works. It is not an exercise in self-esteem inflation. Augie really is a great kid. “The Way, Way Back” merely has a series of characters, mainly his stepfather and a series of girls that are unnecessarily mean to Duncan. But merely having some characters being mean to another character does not make the latter likable. It makes the latter pitiable.

Which takes us back to the impossible job of AnnaSophia Robb, the hot girl next door, who is tasked with finding some reason any reason for being the romantic interest in this story. I pity her perhaps the most. I think it was a very good thing that the writers decided to make her sullen and boring too because if a vibrant enjoyable girl fell in love with Duncan I think I would actually be annoyed to the point of anger. Once, just once, I want to see a movie about a teenage loser that does not somehow get the most beautiful girl in town to fawn all over him. I know Jim Rash did not get any action when he was 14. Why did he decide to write such this girl of cliché into his story?

There is also a problem with much of the humor in the story, which is generally mean. This usually would not be a problem but it is in this case given Duncan’s main personality trait as a kid being unnecessarily picked on. Let’s take a scene that the creators apparently found so funny that they put it in every single movie trailer. At the largest water slide in the park an attendant played by middle aged Nat Faxon is in charge of spacing out the kids going the slide. He likes to play a joke in which he deliberately makes teenage girls wait to start for an inordinately long time so he can ogle them in their bikinis. Duncan gets a job at the water park and later on he pulls the exact same prank. If the whole thing about this movie is that it is uncool for people to be unnecessarily mean to Duncan, why is Duncan presented as cool when he is being unnecessarily mean to other people. In fact, there is a character (played by Jim Rash) in here whose sole purpose is to be mercilessly made fun of by the entire water park staff. This is admittedly consistently funny because Jim Rash is consistently funny but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hypocritical, a concept of which this movie seems to be completely unaware. Guess what? That is bad writing and I am going to double down on what I said about the writing team of Nat Faxon and Jim Rash in my review of “The Descendants.” They are not particularly good at what they do. I don’t care if they just won an Oscar for it.