"The Way, Way Back" begins with early teen Duncan (Liam James) pouting in the back of a station wagon, interrogated by the confident adult Trent (Steve Carrell). Trent asks Duncan to rate himself on a scale of one to ten; Duncan doesn't want to have this conversation; Trent is his mom's new boyfriend, and this makeshift family, which also includes Trent's snotty older teen daughter, is off to spend summer at Trent's beach house at an unspecified northeastern U.S. shore. It's not a place or a situation Duncan's all that into, clearly. Duncan comes back to Trent with a noncommittal "six," and Trent corrects him by rating him a three, because he's unmotivated. The point is that you'd be unmotivated too if you had a pushy, presumptuous jerk like Trent breathing down your neck, and the point is taken.
However. As we get to know Trent and the other adult characters â€" Toni Collette as Pam, Duncan's mom, Allison Janney as drunkard next-door-neighbor Betty, Rob Corddry and Amanda Peet as party-hearty couple Kip and Joan â€" teen Duncan's uniformly sullen response to them grows one-note, and while it's likely that the kid is shy, he comes off as oddly self-sabotaging in his exchanges with Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb), Betty's bright, alienated teen daughter. Maybe Trent is on to something?
Duncan finds an escape from adult discontent and intrigue (as it happens, Trent has got something going on with someone who is not Duncan's mom) at a nearby water park, a sort of recreational relic overseen by Sam Rockwell's Owen, a super laid-back dude whose jokes initially go over Duncan's head but always get on the wrong side of his motley staff (portrayed by Maya Rudolph and Jim Faxon and Nat Rash, the latter two being the movie's cowriters and directors). Secretly (from his family) taking a job at the place, Duncan learns to loosen up and enjoy himself a bit.
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