Occasionally, I will receive in the mail a Netflix movie where I have no idea how the movie ended up on my list. By the time I received The Way Way Back (2013) and popped it in my DVD player, I was expecting a film about prisoners escaping from a Siberian Gulag camp during World War II before realizing that movie was called The Way Back, a 2010 movie I still want to see. Instead, The Way Way Back turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable movie about a teenage outcast trying to understand his life one summer.
The Way Way Back, written and directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, follows the awkward 14-year-old Duncan, played by Liam James, who goes with his divorced mother Pam (Toni Collette) on vacation to a Cape Cod beach house with her boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell) and his daughter. Duncan is out of place in the world of adults, and eventually he begins exploring on his own, finding a surrogate family at the local water park managed by Owen, played by Sam Rockwell.
While I would not describe The Way Way Back as a small independent film, it does use a modest budget to illustrate a realistic story that does not overly play to Hollywood stereotypes. The victories and the defeats in the movie are not overblown, and the story seems honest, while also being fun.
I suspect that The Way Way Back ended up in my Netflix Queue because I had read a good review and saw that two actors I like, Rockwell and Carrell are in the movie. Steve Carrell plays against type here, portraying someone who is a jerk, while Rockwell uses his quirky charm to full effect. And Toni Collette is brilliant at playing a troubled mom, as she did in About a Boy (2002). The excellent cast also includes Maya Rudolph and Rob Corddry.
Considering the small budget, The Way Way Back was modestly successful at the box office and created a lot of buzz coming out of The 2013 Sundance Film Festival. But if you missed it the first time around, it is worth a rental.
Conclusion? If you are in the mood for a modest story with interesting characters and are not expecting an overblown adventure, you probably will enjoy the small coming-of-age tale in The Way Way Back. The honesty of the story and the excellent cast make the movie a nice surprise and a good movie that you might have missed. Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie a respectable 86% rating from both critics and audience members.
{Missed Movies is our continuing series on good films you might have missed because they did not receive the recognition they deserved when released.}
What did you think of The Way Way Back? Leave your two cents in the comments.
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