He comes of age in a water park

I recall reading somewhere that a single caring adult can alter the whole trajectory of a kid's life, particularly if that adult shows up at a critical point in a young person's development.

I thought about that while watching The Way, Way Back, a comedy about a dejected, angry teen-ager who blossoms under the mentorship of the owner of a Massachusetts water park called Water Wizz.

Fourteen-year-old Duncan (Liam James) seems entirely uncomfortable in the world until he meets Owen (Sam Rockwell), an adult who senses the boy's loneliness and encourages him have a little fun.

For Duncan, loosening-up is no easy task. He's stuck on a month-long beach vacation with his divorced mother (Toni Collette) and the new man in her life (Steve Carell). To make matters even worse, Carell's Trent and Collette's Pam are in the early stages of their relationship and have yet to settle important territorial issues.

Just to add a little more insult to the already festering pile of Duncan's injuries, Trent's daugther (Zoe Levin) is a stuck-up, socially conscious teen who's totally condescending toward the dweebish Duncan -- at least when she's not entirely indifferent toward what she perceives as his worthless existence.

Directed and written by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash -- actors and screenwriters who won an Oscar for adapting The Descendants for the screen -- The Way, Way Back can't entirely overcome the familiarity of what amounts to yet another teen reclamation project. But the movie offers interesting wrinkles en route to a predictable -- if slightly attenuated -- finale.

To begin with, The Way, Way Back allows Carell to play to a jerk. Carell's Trent declares his jerkhood from the movie's outset, and does little to change our opinion of him as the story develops.

In Pam, Trent seems to have found a woman so desperate to hold onto a potentially stable relationship that she'll put up with a lot. Trent seems more than willing to take advantage of the situation. He shows far more interest in socializing with another couple (Rob Corddry and Amanda Peet) than in testing the waters of stepfatherhood -- or even in spending time with Pam.

Duncan's shot at self-affirmation arrives in the form of Rockwell's Owen, who becomes a kind of surrogate father for Owen. Not only does Owen offer Duncan a job at Water Wizz, he knows how to relate to a kid, in part because he still is one. In a way, the movie is Owen's coming-of-age story, too.

The cast is further bolstered by Allison Janney, who plays Trent's garrulous neighbor and Anna Sophia Robb, who appears as Janney's daughter, a girl who's smart enough to take an interest in the dejected Duncan, who suffers one indignity after another. An example: He's forced to explore the beachfront Massachusetts town where the story unfolds on a pink girls' bicycle he finds in Trent's garage.

Maya Rudloph appears as one of Sam's employees, and both Faxon and Rash play small roles as water-park workers.

To their credit, Faxon and Rash provide some shading, even for the dislikable Trent, and they belatedly give Collette a chance to dig more deeply into a character with an alarming tendency toward over-dependence.

For all of this, The Way, Way Back may leave you shrugging, perhaps because we've been down this road too many times, perhaps because the movie tends to be a bit bland and perhaps because the adult conflicts -- though sketchily presented -- are more interesting than Duncan's problems.

Let me backtrack a bit, though. It's convenient, but a little inaccurate to classify The Way, Way Back as a coming-of-age story. In truth, neither the movie's teens nor its adults fully mature.

Rather, they're brought to the brink of important life changes. Faxon and Rash keep the movie's ending upbeat, but allow us just enough room to speculate about whether these characters really will be able to sustain new and better versions of themselves.

On blending comedy and drama

After winning an Oscar for their screenplay for The Descendants, Jim Rash and Nat Faxon take a shot at directing.

If you don’t remember that Jim Rash (left) and Nat Faxon (right) won an Oscar for adapting the screenplay for The Descendants -- the 2011 big-screen version of Kaui Hart Hemmings's much-acclaimed novel -- you may know them as actors. Rash plays a community-college dean on NBC's Community; Faxon worked on the late Fox sitcom, Ben and Kate.

Graduates of the famed Los Angeles improvisational troupe, The Groundlings, Faxon and Rash took their first shot at directing with The Way, Way Back, a coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old who begins to hit his stride under the mentorship of the owner of a Massachusetts water park called Water Wizz.

Rash and Faxon wrote the screenplay for The Way, Way Back before they were hired by Payne to work on The Descendants. Their movie went through a variety of incarnations before the writing duo decided to direct it themselves. In all, The Way, Way Back -- now opening around the country -- took eight years to reach the screen. On a recent visit to Denver, Faxon and Rash discussed their movie.

Q: Can you talk a little about why we seem so endlessly fascinated by coming-of-age stories?
Rash: I would argue that we all probably had some kind of rite of passage -- either big or small -- when we were kids. There’s something about looking back at that that’s almost therapeutic. Inevitably, people are going to connect with those moments because there’s a promise of hope in a coming-of-age story, a promise of growth. We all tend to look back on our lives and think, ‘That was a tough time. I’m glad I survived it.’

Q. You (Rash) have said that there’s a scene in the movie that came directly from your own life. Early in the film, Steve Carell’s character -- a guy who might wind up as the stepfather of the movie's 14-year-old main character -- asks his potential stepson to rate himself on a scale of one to 10. When the kid hesitates, Carell’s Trent gives him a three, an obviously cruel slap for any adolescent.
Rash: My stepfather did do that, but we had to heighten it a bit. When I look back at that time, I don’t really think, ‘How dare you?’ I don’t believe in rating people by numbers. I’m not saying that’s right. That said, I understood the message. He was telling me to suck it up, to get out there and meet people.

Q: Devoting eight years to getting a movie made shows real perseverance. The movie went through a bunch of false starts before it actually got rolling.
Rash: The Way, Way Back took a while to get made, but it did open a lot of doors for us. It got us in the door to meet with Alexander Payne, and we got to adapt The Descendants. Coming off that success, we were able to get some momentum. We used it to come back to this script.

Q: For a small movie, The Way, Way Back has a big-name cast that includes Steve Carell and Toni Collette. How did the cast come together?

Rash: We went after actors we loved. Allison Janney (who plays one of Carell's neighbors) is someone we both knew. She signed on first. After that we met Sam Rockwell (who plays the owner of Water Wizz) and then Toni Collette (who plays the mother of the movie's 14-year-old protagonist).
It wasn’t only the material that attracted these actors, but the chance for them to work with great actors who chose the movie for the right reasons.
They knew it was a small, independent movie, and there probably wasn’t a huge financial gain for them. But creatively, it fulfilled something -- not only in their individual roles -- but in the opportunity to work with one another.

Q: You finally got to make the movie, but you also bit off a lot -- writing, directing and even playing small roles in the film. How did you handle all that?
Faxon: It was fun, but a lot of stress, close to overwhelming. Most of that was the result of a tight shooting schedule .... It rained the first days, and we immediately got behind, so the stress level shot through the roof.
But we were comforted by the fact that we were surrounded by actors who were all great talents and great people. We never had to worry about any diva type moments. We also were surrounded by an incredible crew. Being first-time directors we knew we needed experienced, veteran hands.

Q: How did you select Liam James to play Duncan, the teen-ager who occupies the film's center?
Rash: We had a number of sessions with our casting director. Liam came somewhere in the middle. We’d seen lots of kids. There are a lot of kid actors who work professionally. They come in. They know how to work a room. They’re like adults. ... Liam came in pretty much as himself. He was slumped over and pale. ... He’s natural and very believable.

Q: How do you find the balance between drama and comedy? That seems like a pretty tricky business.
Faxon: We received our training from The Groundlings (the fabled Los Angeles improv group). We were taught early on about character and character development. There’s always a fine line between the very serious moments and the ones you laugh about later -- or even during.

Rash: The writing process starts more dramatic and then comedy seeps into it as opposed to trying to write a comedic thing and then realizing in the third act that it doesn't have any heart, and you have to make something happen. That’s a trap. You see it in a lot of big comedies. .... As people, we’re always in some kind of weird head space. We’re conflicted with anger and sadness and stuff, but some funny things can come out of that. We find humor in those type of moments. ...