7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 4.3 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
14-year-old Duncan is forced to spend a summer at his mother's new boyfriend Trent's beach house in upstate New York. Arrogant and a bully, Trent likes to belittle Duncan at any opportunity, leading the boy to take off on his bike to explore his new environment. It is then he comes across the Water Wizz water park and before long a friendship develops between Duncan and the park manager, Owen. Seeing the water park as the much needed escape he has been looking for, Duncan keeps his whereabouts a secret from the others and thanks to Owen's positive outlook and encouraging attitude begins to grow in confidence.
Starring: Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Allison Janney, AnnaSophia Robb, Sam RockwellComing of age | 100% |
Teen | 81% |
Comedy | 68% |
Romance | 35% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Japanese: DTS 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
French: DTS 5.1
Spanish: DTS 5.1
German: DTS 5.1
Italian: DTS 5.1
Czech: Dolby Digital 5.1
Hungarian: Dolby Digital 5.1
Thai: Dolby Digital 5.1
Japanese only available on Japanese menu settings
English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Arabic, Czech, Dutch, Greek, Hungarian, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Romanian, Thai, Vietnamese
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
If you’re too young to have experienced the era of the family station wagon, you may not initially understand the phrase “the way way back”, for it referred to the most posterior section of the car, where quite frequently the third seat faced backwards. As the youngest of three children, I can tell you from personal experience that it was a double edged sword to be relegated to this section of the car. At least I had my own private little region where only the occasional incursions from my elder sisters disturbed me, but on the other hand, I often felt like I was an outlier in my own family, not just separated, but actually forced to simply view where we’d already been rather than where we were headed. The Way, Way Back, though it’s a contemporary feature, exploits the peculiar “geography” of older station wagons by placing Duncan (Liam James) in the “way way back” rear facing seat on what initially seems to be a family trip. The man driving the car, Trent (Steve Carell), starts quizzing Duncan about how Duncan sees himself, asking the kid to give himself a numerical ranking between one and ten. So far, this might seem like any typical family road trip, where a father is attempting to engage his son. Once Trent lets loose with a pretty nasty barrage of insults, telling Duncan he’s no better than a three, and then revealing that he’s not Duncan’s father at all but is instead merely Duncan’s mother’s boyfriend, a somewhat more convoluted dynamic has become apparent. It turns out that Duncan is an unwilling prisoner of sorts as Trent trundles his biological daughter Steph (Zoe Levin) to his beach house, bringing Duncan and Duncan’s mom Pam (Toni Collette) along for the (literal) ride.
The Way Way Back is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainmnt with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. I am slowly but surely becoming a major fan of the Arri Alexa. I often feel that digitally shot features have a shallow and textureless sheen to them, but once again I am really impressed not just by the expected sharpness and clarity of the image on this Blu-ray, but also its nice depth and density. Cinematographer John Bailey beautifully captures the nicely sunny ambience of the island, and while the film has a naturally golden hued look due to the mostly good weather, colors appear natural and are very nicely saturated. Some of the close-ups feature fantastic fine detail (look at the screenshot of Carell in the rear view mirror for a good example). Contrast is very solid here, with no lack of shadow detail in some of the dimmer interior scenes. I noticed no obvious compression artifacts throughout this presentation.
The Way Way Back features a nice if somewhat restrained sounding lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. The best elements of this track in terms of surround activity come from the good use of source cues as well as some of the raucous crowd noises at the water park where Duncan ends up spending most of his summer. Otherwise, the film tends to play out in much smaller scale, more intimate, dialogue scenes, and while fidelity is equally excellent here, the soundfield is understandably narrower and less immersive.
- Tour of the Water Park (1080p; 3:22)
- The Filmmakers: Jim and Nat (1080p; 3:16)
- Ensemble Featurette (1080p; 4:34)
My own (then) 14 year old went to see The Way Way Back over this past summer with a few of his buddies and came back exclaiming at what a good movie it was. This is one of those rare moments of convergence where his curmudgeonly father absolutely agrees with him. While there are a few minor qualms that some may have with the film, overall it's an incredibly heartfelt and beautifully rendered depiction of one young boy coming to terms with who he is and what he has to offer the world. While The Way Way Back isn't really laugh out loud funny in any traditional sense, it's resolutely entertaining and ends up packing quite an emotional wallop. This Blu-ray looks and sounds great and comes Highly recommended.
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