THE WAY WAY BACK

When you get right down to it what we have here is a rites of passage-cum-dysfunctional family movie and I’m sure we’ve all seen an awful lot of those. But don’t be deterred because this is very much a cut above.

Our protagonist is 14-year-old Duncan (Liam James), on the face of it a taciturn, brooding, somewhat nerdy kid, son of divorced parents, now spending the summer with his mother (Toni Collette) and her new boyfriend (Steve Carell) at Carell’s Cape Cod beach house.

Boy and boyfriend don’t get on, largely because Carell is given to emotional bullying. ‘How would you rate yourself out of 10?’ he asks Duncan. ‘I’d give you a three.’ Not exactly confidence-boosting for a kid although, at the beginning, we’d probably give him a three as well.

At the beach house we meet the neighbours – boozy divorcee Allison Janney and her daughter (AnnaSophia Robb), plus Carell’s equally hard-drinking friends Rob Corddry and his seductive younger wife, lover – who knows? – Amanda Peet.

Among this lot, Duncan is either ignored or sorely patronised. No wonder he looks so bloody glum.

But for him salvation comes when one day he stumbles upon a water park called Water Wizz, managed by a splendidly laid-back, wisecracking Sam Rockwell. And Rockwell takes Duncan under his wing because for reasons that we learn later, he sees something of himself in the boy.

Rockwell doesn’t do a lot at the water park. He seems to see his role as going around making people feel good with a succession of dry, witty jokes all of which, at the start anyway, are lost on Duncan because jokes have clearly played no part in his life.

But it’s under Rockwell’s surrogate father influence that the bright, intelligent boy, hitherto hidden under a mask of inarticulate gloom, begins to emerge. So much then for the rites of passage bit; the dysfunctional family aspect crops up in how Colette will deal with the louche, though not entirely loathsome Carell, who wants them all to be a family.

Now, we don’t like Carell and we do like Rockwell. So, secretly, we hope that he and Colette will get together. But in this film, written and directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, who won an Oscar this year for their screenplay of The Descendants, things don’t necessarily work that way.

You want a happy ending on the grounds that all such films kind of demand a happy ending? Fine – but it might not be exactly the happy ending you were looking for, though I found it very satisfying.

OK, it’s not a particularly original story but it’s written with a good deal more wit and imagination than most of its kind. And it’s extremely well played throughout, particularly by Rockwell, Janney and Carell, who manages the tricky feat of being a douchebag who doesn’t really want to be one.

What’s more it provides an enjoyable ending to a summer season that has not been particularly notable for outstanding films.