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Duncan is going on holiday to a summer beach house with his mum, Toni Collette, her new boyfriend Steve Carell, and Steve's daughter, a blond popular Regina George type who treats our hero like an ill-fitting Christmas jumper from grandma. Duncan is a NERD. He likes STAR WARS and PACMAN. He finds a hard time fitting in with all the family fun at the beach, because his family are dicks and for the most part so are the neighbours, until he chances upon a Water Park run by Sam Rockwell and his band of merry dudes and dudettes.
Back in the article A Confederacy Of
Former Dunces, I was trying to
discuss what I used to call the 'indie-quirk' flick. In general,
this would be the sort of movie for which Wes Anderson is the poster
child, that has an independent vibe in spite of a modestly
hollywood-level budget, and most commonly features the fairly
standard plot structure of a romcom or a family drama which is offset
by having lots of 'quirk': nerdy, awkward, introverted characters who at first seem a far cry from the Will Smiths
and Julia Robertses of the big league, yet who nevertheless end up
making the same kinds of decisions that fit conveniently into a
three-act structure.
However,
five or so years on and it's no longer worth bothering to put a
finger on the defining features of these films, because now you'll
probably know exactly the kind of thing I mean if I just say “movies
with yellow posters”:
 |
| Source: http://awesomenator.com/movies/movie-posters-that-look-the-same/ |
Now,
The Way Way Back, the
new offering from the guys behind family drama-but-in-Hawaii The
Descendants, Nat Faxon and Jim
Rash, may not have yellow on its poster but it most definitely has a
soul the colour of daisy pollen and Colman's mustard. To begin with,
it goes for the classic mould of films like Adventureland,
Empire Records and Dazed
and Confused: movies about
nostalgia's endless summer, where the holidays are filled with drink and frolic, there's coming of age coming out of the woodwork and if
you're unlucky enough to have a summer job, it's somewhere where the
boss is a cool mentor-figure and you're basically getting paid to
hang out with your slacker friends all day and argue about Star Wars. Lo and behold, the protagonist is even an awkward introverted young man who has a moment of bonding with a girl based on shared music taste. Bananas, taxis, custard, corn, lemons, yolks, American cheese...why is this so familiar...
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| Well, at least it wasn't the Smiths this time. |
To boot, the main adult cast are like the Avengers of cuddly U.S
indie: Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Sam Rockwell, Allison Janney,
Amanda Peet and, um, that bald guy from Hot Tub Time
Machine (...he can be Hawkeye).
For the most part, like the Avengers, they all have their own style,
and stick to what they do best: Toni is of course The Exhausted
Mother, who's doing all she can to keep her dysfunctional family
together; Rockwell is Lazy Lovable Slacker Man; Amanda Peet is The
Modern Hippie; and Bald Guy is Bald Guy, who looks like an accountant
but drinks like a beat-poet and parties like an accountant having a
mid-lifey.
Fortunately,
the film also manages to play on this familiarity, luring us into
certain expectations before lightly sprinkling them in bright yellow
wee. This factor is most prominent with Steve Carell's jerk
stepfather character, for example: by casting someone whom we are so
used to liking, it can at first be hard to accept that his character
is quite obviously an asshole. In this way, it's almost like we the
audience are put in the same position as his girlfriend Toni
Collette, who fails to see the sphincteral qualities of Carell's ageing
jock for quite some time.
In
addition, the main character, Duncan, begins almost like a parody of the
nerdy-indie-introvert archetype, starting with the classic funny
walk, spaced-out gaze and lack of dialogue, but within the first act
taking this to extremes that are almost excrutiating: he never
answers back, never explains himself, never makes any effort to be
anything more than an inconvenient hanger-on, like a hint of
fart-smell in the disco of his family's summer-long party. We're of
course used to siding with the underdog, and we try hard to stay with
him, but finding sympathy can be a bitch when the cute girl's making
serious effort to flirt and he just stands there like a dead fish,
not even babbling awkward replies as much as just pretending not to
exist, in as creepy a way as possible.
 |
| Fuck conformity; build sandcastles. |
After a while, though, this feels intentional, and it turns out that the film
knows what it's doing. He ends up stumbling upon a sea-park bossed
by Sam Rockwell, who takes him under his wing, introducing him to the
cool sea-park gang, and the rest of the film gives us the gradual
process of a dark and dorky outsider coming out of his shell with the
help of a posse of awesome dudes who, unlike the dickhead audience,
never judge people and are happy to invite everyone to their happy
slacky party lifestyle. In short, the film begins by forcing on us a
protagonist we don't really like, like the awkward younger cousin
we're obliged to entertain at the family reunion, and by the end we
feel genuine affection for him.
 |
| Aw, look he's having fun. Bless. |
This
is a neat trick, and it's supported by an above-average script. Sam
Rockwell is brilliant as usual, his dialogue in particular sparkling
like fresh lemonade, and there's a whole host of background
characters that all pull their weight – every supporting character
working at the park feels like a fully-fleshed out human being. Toni Collette may be overdoing the Exhausted Mother thing (The Sixth Sense, Little Miss Sunshine, About A Boy...), but it doesn't really matter because she's really fucking good at it, and she does wonders filling out the dimensions of her character with a few choice tics and facial expressions.
The
film walks a neat tightrope between the dramatic and comic elements.
Essentially, it flip-flops between sections when Duncan's at home in an angsty family portrait, and the parts where he goes to the
sea-park and it's a joky bubbly bimbly bombly boobaly bobbily boo. This
sometimes feels awkward, and the balance of tone is tough to handle;
overall, The Way Way Back has
the camera-work of a drama with the dialogue of a comedy, so the
jokes can sometimes fall flat in tone despite being funny on paper,
like watching stand-up in a thunderstorm.
 |
| As opposed to wishing a certain comedian would just get off stage and go stand in a thunderstorm. |
All
the same, there are so many lovely little lines of dialogue and
truthful character observations throughout The Way Way Back that it's very
easy to forgive any gripes about tone or overt adherence to certain
tropes of the indie-gem universe. It's a neat little movie that fits
in perfectly with the end of summer, and one that has very much
earned its right to a yellow poster.
4/5
