The other day I came across a film I had previously seen. It's been at least a few years, but it's one of those films that stays with you, it somehow attaches to your soul and you carry it with you.
I think it's because--at least for me--the show picked me up and threw me back to my early teenage years and all that that implies.
Needless to say, growing up is hard.
This film brings into focus the summer of one fourteen-year old as he tries to do so.
You may never have heard of the film, The Way Way Back. We hadn't before we one day happened upon it. We thought we'd give it a chance and I found it to be a wonderful film. The teenager is Duncan, a boy who defines the term: awkward. The way he walks, communicates with others, handles the situations that befall him all scream "awkward.". Of course, in "coming of age" stories we need to see the "before" so we can appreciate the "after" and the story is how Duncan goes from a miserable kid to a less miserable kid with some amazing memories of his first job at a water park.
The performances from the leads and secondary characters are wonderful. We hop from a dysfunctional and arduous family environment to the local waterpark where Duncan has the opportunity to be, in his words, happy. Plus, it has one of the coolest cars I've seen in a film in a long time, a classic Buick Electra Estate Station Wagon...awesome car!
I had to do a search of past blog posts to see if I had written about this film before. It surprised me that I had not. The film was just a gem. It does deal with divorce and grown men behaving like children, and it may trigger some long-buried memories of what life was like in jr. high school. If you're okay with that, I recommend this one.
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