Trailer Watch: “The Way, Way Back”

So, my friend and I saw Joss Whedon’s adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing last week (LOVED it – more on that later), and before the movie, there were trailers (as there usually are). Aside from the preview for Girl Most Likely, the trailer that most caught my eye was for the upcoming Sundance entry, The Way, Way Back. (You can tell that it’s a Sundance film because it’s supposedly indie yet has a bunch of A-list actors, and there are acoustic guitars on the film’s soundtrack):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwNo1i3jkCo

I haven’t read any articles on The Way, Way Back, so I’m judging the film only on its trailer right now. So far, I can see that The Way, Way Back was written and directed by Dean Pelton from Community and Ben from Ben and Kate. It appears to be a coming-of-age story about a young, awkward teenage boy out of place in his own family who makes friends with people at the local water park. And during his coming of age and making of friends, he learns how to properly ogle and objectify headless women in skimpy bathing suits before they ride down a water slide.

Note: the women are not actually headless, like in a horror movie. The camera just never lets us see their faces, and only gives us glimpses of their barely-covered butts.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I just love seeing a teenage boy grow out of his awkward phase by learning how to ogle female consumers of his workplace with confidence, asking them to hold their stances so he can leer at them a little longer, getting approval from his older male co-workers and the “I-am-scandalized-and-offended-but-not-really” look from female co-worker Maya Rudolph.

I wasn’t really surprised to see a clip like this in a trailer for a major motion picture. Objectification of women is a punchline in American pop culture. Seth Rogen’s character in Knocked Up, for example, had a website where he and his friends kept track of the moments actresses got naked in movies.

Of course, in Knocked Up, Seth Rogen’s character keeping track of nude scenes in movies was meant to be a sign of his immaturity. In this trailer for The Way, Way Back, the protagonist’s objectification of women seems to be a sign of him coming out of his shell.

I’m on the record at not being a huge fan of Judd Apatow and thinking that he peaked with Freaks and Geeks, but at least his perpetual man-child characters eventually realize that they need to grow up and change their ways. This film seems to indicate that ogling women like pieces of meat is a part of development to grow into, rather than growing out of.

Yes, I know this is just a trailer, two and a half minutes out of more than ninety, I should give this film another chance, yada yada, but I’m not thrilled that this film’s marketing department chose to highlight that scene. Why should I pay to see more blatant objectification when I can “get” that for free in almost every piece of advertising ever?

What does intrigue me about The Way, Way Back is the glimpses we’ve seen of Steve Carell’s character.

Steve Carell is a likable actor who plays likable characters. We remember him from The Daily Show and The Office and Little Miss Sunshine, and he was likable even when his characters were at their worst.

In the trailer for The Way, Way Back, Steve Carell’s character seems very Steve Carell-y in personality and tone, but he’s not likable. He tells the protagonist, the son of his girlfriend, that he’s only a “3,” and it’s easy to see that this is not just the clueless commentary from the bumbling stepfather archetype. This man is an emotionally abusive bully who makes nasty comments to his girlfriend’s son under the guise of giving advice.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to see a film where a bullying character was played by an actor as likable as Steve Carell? That film could highlight the insidious nature of emotional abuse.

Maybe this film does just that. I can’t tell, and I don’t know if I want to weigh the shots of bathing suit-clad butts against the possibility of seeing a decent story about the effects of bullying and abuse on a young teenage boy. That’s 14 dollars at stake in a summer where Girl Most Likely and Austenland are both premiering. Whether I see it or not, I hope the shots of lady butts are minimal and the story with the subtly abusive bully is well-developed.