Adult Movies...

I’ve been let go from my job. So as you can see I have a lot more free time for things such as blogging, fretting about the future and wondering about the girl who got away. One might say that I shouldn’t be too concerned with my romantic life when I don’t have a job but I’m not wired that way. I always worry about the time when I realize that I am gonna be alone for the rest of my life. Not because I want to but because I didn’t get the chance to show the woman I want to be with that I am worth the annoyance of what it is truly like to be with a undiagnosed depressive personality. Just look at the title of my blog. Mr. Unhappy’s Movie Blog. I could have given myself a happy moniker because at the time I was dating (surreptitiously) the girl of my dreams. Yet something inside of me made me want to self name myself Mr. Unhappy. In truth, Mr. Unhappy was a idea I had for a screenplay for a slasher movie. It wasn’t a portrayal of what my mood was but just something that made sense at the time.

Regardless being unemployed makes you start to think about your life decisions and somehow, someway I start thinking about that moment when I had the gravy train with biscuit wheels and I fucked it up. Yet this is a movie blog and not a whine about my life blog so I guess I should bring this to the point I was originally trying to make. There comes a time in your life, usually a couple of times, when you have to make a decision about what type of person you will be. One is usually in your teenage years and the other come as you hit your late twenties (if you are normal) or your mid thirties (if you are me).

In the movie The Way Way Back, Duncan is trying to figure out what he is in life and a summer at the Water Whizz water slide park helps him find his inner grown up. In the movie Liberal Arts (written, starring and directed by How I Met Your Mother’s Josh Radnor) Jesse is at a critical moment in his life when he meets Zibby and it turns his life upside down while helping him realize what he wants in his adult life. These two movies touch on those special moments in your life when you come to a decision about your life and choose the type of man (or woman) you will grow up to be.

Lets begin with...

The Way Way Back

When I was a teenager I was a lot like Duncan. A quiet loner who liked to be alone and left to my own devices. As Steve Carell’s excellently portrayed douchebag Trent tells him “I think your a 3” and at the beginning of the movie maybe Duncan is. Still it isn’t something your father figure needs to say especially when a kid is really just beginning to deal with his mom dating again after the breakup of his parents marriage. It isn’t the type of bonding moment you should have with your would be stepson. Duncan is on one of these movie vacations where during the summer everyone gets to take three months off and people seemingly don’t have to work or pay rent. Maybe it is an east coast thing. Suffer through the snow and hurricanes and you get three months in summer to enjoy yourself at a beach house.

The trip was obviously not Duncan’s idea. He is stuck at the beach with only Trent’s daughter Steph or the next door neighbor Peter who has a lazy eye that his mother constantly ridicules. So Duncan tags along with Steph and her friends, including Peter’s sister Susanna (played by AnnaSophia Robb, quickly becoming the Dakota Fanning of teenage roles) to the beach where he has little to do but play with sand and check out the nubile bodies of his near step sister’s friends. So Duncan takes off on a bike and eventually comes to the Water Whizz waterpark. There he meets Owen (Iron Man 2’s underrated Sam Rockwell), a manchild who manages the park with as little management as possible to the chagrin of his assistant manager Caitlin played by SNL’s Maya Rudolph. Owen gives Duncan a summer job doing odd jobs around the park and takes him under his wing.

As the summer wears on, Trent is shown for the a-hole he truly is, Owen helps Duncan find his voice and personality (dragging him out of his shell) and helping him find the courage to pitch so serious woo at Susanna who likes him, for some reason. The Way Way Back is a story about finding who you want to be despite what others may think of you. It captures the summers of all of our youths where you obsessed over a girl (or guy), tried to not make a fool out of yourself and looked up to the cool guy who while actually not having it together seems like he has it all. There are moments in this movie when I cackled out loud and I’m pretty sure the smile never left my face. It was a solid debut for Jim Rash (Dean Pelton from Community) and Nat Faxon (from MadTV and various other movies) as writer/directors. They so eloquently capture the awkwardness of early teenage years and never become unrealistic or preachy.

The acting performances are managed as well. Trent is an asshole and he is played brilliantly by Steve Carell who is not my first choice for playing a bad guy. Owen’s glib man child is embodied by Sam Rockwell who seems so effortless in most everything he does. AnnaSophia Robb astounds me in everything I see her in (maybe if I watch the Sex and The City prequel series I would not say that) and she plays her role perfectly, never really coming on to Duncan but always trying to be near him, look after him, and give him a chance to be more than a three. Duncan as played by Liam James (From TV’s The Killing) is able to pull off both the awkward as well as the emotional growth the character has. This movie takes a simple idea, a summer vacation to the beach, and yet makes it all new.

Mr. Unhappy sez: I’d like to go way way back and get a job with Sam Rockwell at the water slide park. Maybe I wouldn’t be such a mess now.

Which leads me to...

Liberal Arts

I was never a good student and as time went on it became clear to me that college, for me, was not the way. I just couldn’t get past the idea of going to class when the teachers or administration didn’t care that I did. I was never a social butterfly so college for me was a waste of money. The only class I cared to go to was Screenwriting and as time went on, even that became something I could do on my own. So I stopped and got jobs so I could pay the bills and move out on my own. I never really got into the college experience. Josh Radnor’s (TV’s Ted Mosby) character Jesse Fisher loved college and the freedom he got to read and be his own man. Now 35 he has just broken up with his live in girlfriend, has a love/hate relationship with his hometown New York City and is drifting through life. So when one of his favorite teachers Peter Hoberg (Richard Jenkins) invites him back to his Alma mater for his retirement dinner, Jesse is happy to go. Once there he meets the incomparable Elizabeth (Zibby) played to perfection by the better Olsen sister Elizabeth, a 19 year old Sophomore who captures Jesse’s imagination and heart.

Jesse and Zibby begin to hang out (with a little prompting by a quirky performance by Zac Efron as the hippy sage Nat) and when Jesse leaves, Zibby burns him a CD of music to live by and he promises to write her a actual letter (with paper and pen). Back in New York, Jesse is a changed man, listening to the music Zibby gave him and has found his soul again. He writes Zibby and as their flirtation grows Jesse begins to wonder if he can, in good faith, date a woman 16 years his junior. Zibby is grown up beyond her years but as my friend Phil said once of a girl I dated “There are inherent problems to dating someone that young.”

Still Jesse returns to his old school to visit Zibby and their relationship is tested. Radnor in his writing/directing debut is smart to build the relationship first and then begin to point out the flaws so the viewer is invested in seeing this relationship grow. As Jesse learns more about himself and the person he wants to be, he begins to learn about what he wants out of life. The relationship with Zibby is strong and we never are as conflicted as to whether they should be together as Radnor is. I was drawn to the movie for the Mosbyness of it all but the strong story and chemistry between the two stars is palpable. Liberal Arts tells the story of a man who has no idea what he wants finding exactly what he wants. The journey isn’t easy or fast but a necessary one to become the adult he is supposed to be.

Mr. Unhappy sez: Liberal Arts makes going back to college seem easy but growing up a lot harder. Elizabeth Olsen helps...

***

Finding out who you are and what you want is a lot harder than it sounds. For me, I looked at these two movies and while it made me realize some bad truths about myself, it put into focus something that I’ve been thinking for two years now. I don’t want to be alone in life but I don’t fear it as much as I once did. Sometimes when you want something bad enough, you’d rather wait for what you want and risk being alone rather than try to be something your not. From the time when I was a teen, I’ve never tried to be anything but myself. As a 34 year old, I am still willing to hope that the one that got away will still see in me what I see in her. If not, I’m willing to see what happens... and Elizabeth Olsen helps...

The Way Way Back is in Theaters now and 

Liberal Arts can be found on Amazon Instant Watch and Xfinity On Demand