88% The Way, Way Back

All Critics (67) | Top Critics (26) | Fresh (58) | Rotten (8)

The Way Way Back gets it wittily, thrillingly right. It turns the familiar into something bracingly fresh and funny. It makes you laugh, then breaks your heart.

Part of what makes Way, Way Back so engaging are the terrific performances.

It's likely there will be many wet eyes in the theater as the screen goes to black.

You don't see too many movies about the importance of fathers, and they're rarely done this well.

The film is awash in safe choices, from indie-pop-accompanied montages to sitcom one-liners and black-and-white characters.

A coming-of-age drama that manages some genuinely surprising turns despite the formulaic road it travels.

Refreshing coming-of-age tale a joy for teens and up.

Sam Rockwell deserves consideration for a Best Supporting Actor nomination --- he is that good.

Faxon, Rash, and their exceptionally capable cast have managed, with a story that is specific enough to feel new but universal enough to hit home.

a perceptive, incisive film about people at different points in their lives struggling or drowning

With a double dose of Rockwell - Norman and Sam - it's a picture-perfect portrait of what summer - and summer movies - ought to be.

There is a lot going on in "The Way, Way Back" and these stories are intelligently told.

You basically get to live vicariously through a kid who becomes Sam Rockwell's best pal, and I promise, that's all you've ever wanted, even if you don't know it yet.

It has its charms, most notably in Rockwell's wise-cracking put-on artist, but it never goes for anything really deep as 2009's similarly themed "Adventureland" did, while taking a few missteps along the way.

A sunny wonder that effortlessly out-classes such floundering box-office behemoths as The Lone Ranger and White House Down.

Warm, engaging, and thoroughly charming even though we can predict every turn in this old-fashioned coming of age story. Carell is terrific as an unlikable bully.

The Way, Way Back only really gets interesting when Carell enters the frame and introduces an unconventional villain into this entirely too-conventional coming-of-age scenario.

[Duncan is] a passive participant in his own story, and that does not make for an especially admirable protagonist.

As with The Descendants, Faxon and Rash ably balance the humorous and the heavy, tipping neither toward the silly nor the mawkish.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_way_way_back/

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