The Way Way Back

When 14-year-old Duncan (Liam James) is forced to spend the summer in a low-rent seaside resort with his mom (Toni Collette),
her ghastly new boyfriend Trent (Steve Carrell) and his horrid teenage daughter, a particularly hellish vacation seems unavoidable. It gets worse. As Duncan's pretty blonde (Bridge to Terabithia's AnnaSophia Robb) neighbour notes Cape Cod is "like Disneyland for adults". And sure enough, mom and Trent are soon staying up all night, smoking weed and making Duncan feel increasingly out of sync.

Happily, our hero finds an unlikely refuge and an even unlikelier father figure (Sam Rockwell) at the ramshackle local water park. Could a crappy summer job turn out to be Duncan’s salvation?

The Way, Way Back is being variously marketed as this year's Little Miss Sunshine or the new Juno. And, to be fair, the marketing speak and trailer pitches are not entirely inaccurate, right down to the casting-in-common.

How did two first time directors rope in the constellation of talents listed above? The answer lies in the quality of the material. Rash and Faxon – the Academy Award-winning authors behind George Clooney vehicle The Descendants – have form. Their wry, bittersweet, humorous penmanship ensures that even The Way, Way Back's smallest parts – Allison Janney's good-time mom-next-door, Toni Colette's weak-willed wife, Rash's jaded booth attendant – are jollied along by witty banter and neat touches.

Characters are seldom as, well, carefully characterised as they are here. Maya Rudolph essays a role earmarked "voice of reason" that would surely, in a lesser picture, translate into "nagging girlfriend"; Sam Rockwell steals the show with a likeable part that, written out in emoticons, equates to Just Another Man-Baby. In practice, it's the actor's funniest work since his multiple turns in the sublimely ridiculous Gentleman Broncos.

From its lilting, rolling title to its tart observations of human failings, this is as clever as summer comedies get. John Bailey's hazy, summery cinematography, a chronologically skipping soundtrack and the unchanging architecture of the summer resort grants the film an ageless gloss. A crafty, ambiguous ending may signal a triumph or a catastrophe worthy of an Ibsen heroine. Better yet, it
makes you wonder if maybe they're the same thing.