
Flicks, Rebecca Barry Hill
A contender for feel-good comedy of the year, The Way, Way Back treads a similar path to Jim Rash and Nat Faxon’s other Oscar-winning film, The Descendants, with memorable characters, heartfelt themes and a great cast. This isn’t quite as nuanced or complex as the George Clooney drama, sticking to a crowd-pleasing formula, broad humour and familiar coming-of-age sentiment. And although you can fairly predict the girl-next-door romance and protagonists’ character arc from gloomily awkward to cheerily confident, it’s not hard to warm to the film when you spend a good portion of it laughing out loud.
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