BY MICHAEL GOODPASTER
It’s a “coming of age” story where a timid kid gets stuck going to a local pool while on vacation with his mom and his seemingly future step-dad. At the pool he “comes out of his shell” and start to develop his own personality and grows some balls. This is all thanks to the change of scenery and the awesome cast of characters that worked at and hung out at the pool. The kid, played by Liam James, did a great job of being awkward enough to be off-putting but sweet enough to be relatable. Kids in movies like this tend to often be annoying and lame. This dude was not and should have a good career ahead of him. The supporting cast rocked. Sam Rockwell got his Bill Murray from “Meatballs” on as the cool guy in charge, Maya Rudolph, Jim Rash, Nat Faxon, and a hand full of others all made it a fun time whenever the kid went to the water park. Meanwhile his home life saw his mom played by Toni Collette who is there with a really assholed-up Steve Carell. Carell was really unlikable and a jerk in the movie. It was awesome to see him prove he could do that and do it so well. On top of this we get Allison Janney being awesome as always. I’m at the point now where if I see Allison Janney in the credits of something I’m going to watch it. She is just THAT enjoyable. Rob Corddry and Amanda Peet drop in for nice additions as well. I really enjoyed this movie. I’ve been watching just as many movies this year as the past few years, which is a lot, but it seems like there has been a void of smart comedies like this. This movie fits into his own quasi-independent film where it has that slow human nature, wandering emotional ride type of vibe to it but it also has a bigger production budget than most “real indies” and has a cast that would make even the worst of scripts come off like a million bucks. Then we factor in the fact that this script IS well written and good… yeah, it’s got a lot going for it. See this. A-
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