The Way Way Back is a film about teenage adolescence and bad parenting. I found it quite enjoyable, but somewhat less than scintillating. It struck me as one of those films that basically “did everything right,” but still fell a good bit short of creating a powerful emotional bond between audience and story, or between audience and protagonist. This film is definitely not like The Perks of Being a Wall Flower, where you felt deep emotions from your own childhood flooding back the whole movie, and where you bond so greatly with the characters you cry in the end. No, The Way Way Back is much more clinical about the whole subject. And it’s much more about the relationship of the young man Duncan to his fucked up parents than it is about other aspects of being a child.

The real plus in this film is Steve Carell, who once again proves he is very underrated as a serious actor. It was incredibly disconcerting to watch him playing a horrible, implicitly menacing, and insufferable step-father type, and playing the role 100% straight, but he was pretty fabulous in the part. The spectacular and always radiant Toni Collette plays Duncan’s mother, and she is her usual talented self, although hamstrung a bit by limited dialog. The dynamic between Carell, Collette, and Duncan (Liam James,) is quite well done.

I think The Way Way Back falls short because none of the rest of the film comes together emotionally. I know Liam James is playing an awkward, clumsy, painfully shy kid, which he does with admirable conviction, but he definitely lacks that certain something as an actor that let’s you bond with him despite the unattractiveness of his character. I was a bit of an awkward, shy kid too, but I wouldn’t want to relate to that Duncan kid in a million years! The whole story at the water park was underwhelming – the crazy manager was comedically a little off, and he was not warm enough to pull off the relationship with the kid in the absence of dialog. The support staff at the water park were kind of superfluous and undeveloped. The teenage “romance” with the gloomy blonde girl (AnnaSophia Robb, the Soul Surfer girl) was sort of sweet, but basically didn’t go anywhere emotionally. And let’s face it, ever since Bounce, water parks have been a problematic backdrop for emotional dramas.

Nevertheless, I think The Way Way Back is probably worth seeing. Despite its limitations, it’s entertaining and in some ways quite well done.