The Way Way Back

It's a good movie starring Negative Outlook? favorite Annasophia Robb. She's 19 now so it's not SO creepy to blog about her.* It's a funny, touching movie made by the same folks who made Juno and Little Miss Sunshine. 

Robb plays Susanna, who is vacationing at a summer home with her fun alcoholic mother played by Allison Janney and her younger brother Peter who has a wandering eye along the lines of Peter Lorre and Marty Feldman. Susanna's father had come out of the closet in the recent past and left her mother. She loves her father very much and misses him and so is kind of down in the dumps. Plus her mother is hurting even if she puts on a good front in public.

Susanna doesn't really connect with the other girls her age who are hanging out on the beach and so seems kind of lonesome. Things turn around when people arrive at the summer home next door. They are an unmarried couple who have recently started dating. Each has a child they have brought along. One is a 14-year-old boy named Duncan who is down in dumps like Susanna because his mom (Toni Collette) has a boyfriend (Steve Carrell) who's a dick. The boyfriend brought along a daughter who is rude to Duncan as well. Even though Duncan is younger, Susanna sees something in him and sympathizes with his misery, and she repeatedly attempts to strike up conversations with the awkward and socially-inept Duncan.

Duncan is grateful for Susanna's kindness towards him but is too unhappy to really do anything about it. His fortune turns for the better as he meets Owen, played by Sam Rockwell, a manager of the local water park. Owen hires Duncan and becomes his fun, insightful guru thereby helping Duncan pull himself out of his funk.

Duncan is secretive about where he goes during the day, but Susanna finally takes some initiative and follows him to work one day. The new improved Duncan** is now more receptive and confident and a friendship blooms between the two.***

Still, the Way Way Back is a dramady, not a pure comedy, so some drama upsets Duncan's summer fun. His mother's boyfriend is still a dick and he cheats on her with a woman played by Amanda Peet**** So they decide to go back home and take Duncan with them. Before he leaves, Duncan does receive a parting kiss on the lips from Susanna and seems strangely content when his mom joins him in the way, way back seat***** of the station-wagon right before the fade-to-black music and credits role. And yet I believe he fails to appreciate how close to nirvana he really came. For a person as unhappy as he was, it was enough to come across two kind souls like Owen and Susanna and share some summer adventures. Now the future doesn't look so bleak.

Susanna herself seemed to brighten after making a connection with the lost Duncan. She was no longer alone among the girls she couldn't connect with and a mom in mourning for her marriage and husband.

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*Nonetheless it still is, we are forced admit.
**Thanks to Sam Rockwell's Owen.
***Basically Duncan has just hit the jackpot.
****Wife of David Benioff, HBO's Game of Thrones' co-creator.
*****Hence the title.