From the DVD Shelf: Josh Reviews Away We Go (2009)
Burt and Verona (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) are expecting their first child. When they learn that Burt’s parents are moving away, they realize that they have nothing tying them to Denver any longer. (Verona’s parents have passed away.) So Burt & Verona decide to travel around the country, visiting various friends and family-members in an attempt to find a new place to live that they think will be a good place to raise their baby. What at first seems like a fun adventure turns dispiriting rapidly as they discover that everyone they visit has fairly crazy ideas about parenting.
Written by Dave Eggers (author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) & his wife Vendela Vida and directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, The Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road), Away We Go is a quirky film filled with quirky characters. Your tolerance for that approach to creating characters will determine how annoying you find this to be as the movie progresses. The characters are, for the most part, painted in pretty broad, caricature-esque strokes. They are funny and painful and sad, but not all that deep. I really enjoyed the individual performances of the actors playing the various folks who Burt & Verona visit — Allison Janney, Jim Gaffigan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Josh Hamilton, Chris Messina, and Melanie Lynskey (who, by the way, had a heck of a year in 2009 with this film along with her roles in The Informant! and Up in the Air) — so much that this trend didn’t really bother me too much until I sat back and thought about the film afterwards.
In my review of Woody Allen’s 2009 film, Whatever Works, I described my frustration at the enormous condescension that Mr. Allen’s screenplay seemed to be showing towards every character in the film with the exception of the Woody Allen stand-in character played by Larry David. I felt the same sort of condescension here. Burt and Verona are presented as the only sane characters in an entirely insane world. Burt’s parents (played by Catherine O’Hara & Jeff Daniels) might be hysterical (I’d like to see a whole movie about these two!), but they and are jaw-droppingly self-centered and, shockingly, have no apparent interest in their grandchild-on-the-way. Verona’s friend Lily (Janney) is crass and her husband (Gaffigan) is a buffoon. Burt’s cousin LN (that’s not a typo) and her husband Roderick are bizarre hippie-intellectuals who have sex in the same bed where their children sleep and breastfeed other people’s babies. Burt & Verona’s friends Tom & Munch are by far the most normal of the bunch, but even they have their problems (which I won’t spoil here). I understand the point that Eggers & Vida were going for, that new parents need to find their own way in the world and not try to mimic anyone else’s parenting techniques or lifestyles, but I think Away We Go would have been a much deeper film if it hadn’t been so quick to go for the laugh at the expense of the characters who Burt & Verona meet.
What saves the film for me are the understated, heartfelt performances that Krasinski and Rudolph turn in. Both have proven themselves to be extraordinarily funny TV comedians (on The Office and SNL), but I was quite pleasantly surprised by what fine actors they both show themselves to be in this film. Rather than going for broad comedic performances, both actors keep themselves reined in, using subtlety as opposed to over-the-top exaggeration. At the same time, both Krasinski and Rudolph bring a lot of warmth and humanity to their characters. Burt and Verona are both flawed and very human, but we really feel their love for one another and their fervent desire to do right for their child on the way. Although they’re in their thirties, there’s a sense of immaturity to Burt and Verona. Not frat-boy behavior like you’d see in The Hangover, it’s more a sense that they haven’t quite figured out what they want their lives to be yet. That journey is at the heart of Away We Go.
I saw this movie a few months ago, when my wife and I were at a similar point in life as Burt and Verona: on the cusp of becoming first-time parents. This gave me a connection with Away We Go that I might not otherwise have felt. Even trying to separate that emotional connection out from my judgment, I can still say that there is a lot to enjoy in Away We Go. There is some terrific humor to be found, and the core of the story is compelling. And any movie that contains the unique scene in which Burt begins to suspect that Verona is pregnant is A-OK in my book. I just wish that the characters surrounding Burt & Verona on their journey had been given more complexity. I’m a big fan of Sam Mendes’ work, but with Revolutionary Road (read my review here) and now Away We Go, I can’t say I’ve felt nearly as engaged by his films lately as I was by American Beauty and The Road to Perdition. But I do still respect him as a potent creative force, and I look forward to seeing what he does next. (James Bond???)