Man on Film: The Way, Way Back

Perhaps my life of enabling the aquatic enjoyment of others combined with the sometimes crippling inferiority complex that I've dealt with on-and-off for the bulk of my life make me the extremely specific target audience for this film, but I was completely enamored with Jim Rash and Nat Faxon's directorial debut, The Way, Way Back. Hot off their Oscar-winning scribe work on The Descendants, Faxon and Rash--soon to co-star in their own absurdist hour-long buddy cop dramedy on TNT that will be packaged with Franklin & Bash--elected to wade into the indie waters of the awkward coming-of-age flick.

Liam James and AnnaSophia Robb

Positioning Liam James--who already has quite an extensive resume having already worked on films including 2012 and Horsemen and series including Psych and The Killing at the age of just 16--front-and-center, Rash and Faxon put their young protagonist, Duncan through the emotional ringer of adolescence while trying to acclimate to divorce and his mother's new douchebag boyfriend (Steve Carell) while at that boyfriend's beach house in the Northeast (presumably either the Cape or Long Island) for the summer. James is called upon to play the teen uncomfortable in his own skin, content to sit at home by himself rather than socialize with peers, who eventually comes into his own with the help of the social safety net provided him by his de facto mentor, Owen (Sam Rockwell)--his supervisor at the surreptitious summer job he gets at a run-down water park. As Duncan gradually grows more confident under the lead-by-example tutelage of the irreverent yet juvenile Owen, James sheds Duncan's timidity and awkwardness with aplomb.

To their credit, Faxon and Rash manage to expertly navigate tricky emotional waters, adroitly balancing the emotionally raw and painful with much-needed uproarious laughter. Rash and Faxon's decision to set the tale against the emotional backdrop of a mother (Pam, played by Toni Collette) and son still reeling from the divorce and essential abandonment of the husband and father is what gives the film its weight. Both are damaged, and James and Collette both thrive in their roles as the fragile, beleaguered survivors. As the stunted boyfriend, Trent, Carell channels Michael Scott at his most odious and petty and infuses it with a cocksure swagger masking his deeper insecurities. While entirely unlikable, Carell does good work here, making his early exit from The Office retroactively rewarding (at least for those of whom thought Michael Scott should have stayed on the show despite the fact that the character really had nowhere else to go).

Where The Way, Way Back's dramatic core sits mostly in the seasonal cottage abode of the makeshift family--there is a pretty distinct dichotomy in the film's two spheres that only Duncan and eventually the two neighbor kids, Peter and Duncan's love interest, Susanna, played by AnnaSophia Robb [pictured above] are able to traverse until the final act--Duncan's clandestine work world is where the film's humor is mostly injected (not to take away from Allison Janney's turn as the terrible drunk mother at the beach house next door, which is largely hilarious). The color, the heart, and the joy of the film all comes from the weird world of Water Wizz. Stacked with accomplished comedic character actors (Maya Rudolph, Rockwell, Rash, and Faxon), Water Wizz is the almost forgotten water park staffed by adults whose development was arrested and who could never quite bring themselves to leave the job that was at least as much fun as it ever was work. [Again, I'm kind of the target niche demographic for this movie (there was even a time when a fellow lifeguard and I entertained the notion of moving to the Wisconsin Dells and working at Noah's Ark for the summer).] Faxon, Rash, and Rudolph all do their thing exceptionally well, but to actually buy into the film completely, one needs to have Rockwell kill. He does. Rockwell's Owen acutely intuits that Duncan needs a bit of guidance, and while he never comes out and tells Duncan that he'll take him under his wing, he builds up Duncan's self-esteem like an older brother, or really, like a father. He's far from perfect, but if it isn't for Owen as the mentor, Duncan doesn't come out of this film emboldened. Water Wizz is where Duncan gets to start his life anew, breaking forth from the chrysalis of pubescence and paternal abandonment.

If anyone doubted how much of an imprint Faxon and Rash had on The Descendants, those nagging questions can likely be put to rest. The Way, Way Back has every bit the heart that The Descendants had. Faxon and Rash masterfully tug at the heartstrings while avoiding being overtly manipulative, somehow mining a rich vein of emotional pain within me that I thought had been tapped out ages ago and allowing me come out on the other side both intensely happy and very sad. It is rare that a movie makes me feel anything as much as The Way, Way Back did, but it's a testament to Nat Faxon and Jim Rash's deft touch as burgeoning filmmakers, a path that I personally hope is a long and fruitful one.

Man on Film: Crazy, Stupid, Love.

As we were trying to choose which movie to head out to over the weekend, our choices narrowed down to a few films. When Crazy, Stupid, Love. came up, TSLF made a comment that rings truer than any positive buzz could have:

It's weird, but I sort of trust Ryan Gosling's choices.

She is right. Half Nelson, Lars and the Real Girl, and Blue Valentine were all great. The decisions to sign on to Stay and All Good Things (neither of which I've seen, but both of which were poorly received) were clearly defensible, as he was working with the man coming off of Monster's Ball and Finding Neverland on the former and Capturing the Friedman's on the latter. For what it was, The Notebook is fairly good. And as far as what's coming up for Gosling, Drive and The Ides of March both look to be promising if judged by the trailers.

As for Crazy, Stupid, Love., it seemed as though everyone who saw it came out loving it. Given that and Gosling's trustworthiness, it seemed like Crazy, Stupid, Love. could very conceivably overcome its awkward/awful title and lackluster trailer and actually be a decent flick.

For the most part, it was.

Sure, it is a romantic comedy, generally the kiss of death for dudes. Its trailer doesn't do it any favors on that front either. Somehow this film doesn't feel like a rom-com. Maybe it's the emotional rawness at its center as its protagonist has been cuckolded. The destruction of a marriage is not often at the center of a rom-com. In a world that deals almost exclusively with two singles who aren't supposed to be together getting together, seeing a separated couple trying to piece together their lives after one's infidelity tears them both apart is refreshing in a world other than that of the tiresome adult-oriented family melodrama.

Honestly, the film is just entertaining. The potential liability, Julianne Moore, has been cast in the only sort of role that she can actually pull off: the woman whose marriage is falling apart. While one has to wonder what this says about her own marriage, she is not thrust into the authoritarian roles that she is so ill-suited for like in Next or Children of Men where her inability to match the tone of the film grates one's nerves for every second that she's on screen. Past her, Carell is typically likeable, Gosling owns the role of lothario, Emma Stone gets to play an adult, and Marissa Tomei gets a great cameo. The narrative is well-crafted.

If Crazy, Stupid, Love. has a fault (other than that goddamn name), it is that its climax is too schmaltzy. It probably could have done without the About a Boy ending with a graduation speech supplanting the talent show performance, and the soul mate shit didn't work, but you can only punish a film so much for this. When a film is genuinely surprising for 110 minutes, an unsurprising eight minutes at the end don't necessarily sink the ship.

(After talking about how crappy the trailer was, you didn't think I was gonna put that up, did you?)

The Queue Continuum: Seasons One and Two of Parks and Recreation

Perhaps the initial lukewarm reviews scared me off, but for whatever reason I did not watch Parks and Recreation until a couple weeks ago.

It took me about four days to catch up.

Now, everything I heard about Parks & Rec led me to believe that--much like its counterpart The Office--the first season sat somewhere in between godawful and not very good. Since I've still not seen any episodes of The [American] Office from its first season other than the abysmal pilot yet found a way to be invested, I took the same approach to Parks & Rec. Starting with the first episode of the second season, I chugged along, holing up in my intermittently heated apartment during the recent snap that Texans call winter and burning through all 24 episodes in no time. By the time the fourth episode rolled around ("Practice Date"), I found myself starting to give a damn. When "Ron and Tammy" was finished, I was hooked.


Within a few days, I had not only finished the second season, but I had gone back and watched season one in spite of my leeriness, and had caught up on what I had missed of this current third season.


I feel confident saying Parks and Recreation is better right now than The [American] Office has ever been.

I think the show's real strength--and what sets it apart from its sister show--is that no one is unfathomably inept. The Office's true shortcoming has always been Michael Scott. Not only is he irritating, but he is such a bumbling idiot 95% of the time that suspending the level of disbelief necessary to buy him as anyone's boss at least in any long-term scenario is so taxing that it actually makes me tired. While I like Steve Carell, Michael Scott's exit can only be good for the show at this stage.

In the first season, Leslie Knope was essentially the female version of Michael Scott. In addition to being socially retarded (and I actually mean this in the sense that her social development was retarded, you whiny, PC douches), she was barely competent. Luckily, Greg Daniels and Michael Schur (presumably) identified that this dynamic was not working, and there was a paradigm shift insofar as way in which the character of Leslie Knope was portrayed. As the second season began to take shape, her awkwardness was still present, but she was no longer bordering on being incompetent. This adjustment drastically alters the show for the better. With Leslie becoming relatable, there is a transformation from mediocrity to sublimity.

The true key to its success, though, is that the characters are great. Parks and Recreation is a character-driven show, but unlike The Office all of its characters seem real*. Each character, no matter how small actually brings a lot to the show. I could wax ecstatic about everybody on the show, but I've got a better idea.

*If it is hard to believe that Michael Scott could possibly have risen to where he is, then it is even harder to believe that Dwight Schrute could exist at all.

Watch for yourself.