Away We Go (Focus Features)
Rated R for language and some sexual content.
Starring John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph, Carmen Ejogo, Catherine O'Hara, Jeff Daniels, Allison Janney, Jim Gaffigan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Josh Hamilton, Chris Messina, Melanie Lynskey, Paul Schneider, Isabelle Moon Alexander.
Written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida.
Directed by Sam Mendes.
GRADE: A-
REVIEWI like a good "postcard" movie every now and then. I'm talking about movies like
The Sure Thing, the original
National Lampoon's Family Vacation,
Rain Man,
Flirting with Disaster, etc. These are films that follow main characters across the country and allow the audience to see all the unique divergent landscapes and lifestyles of North America.
Away We Go is the latest "road" movie to be released and it may be one of my favorite "postcard" movies ever.
John Krasinski plays Burt and Maya Rudolph plays Verona, two thirtysomethings about to have their first child (they are not married). The couple intends to have their child in upstate New York where Burt's parents live, but when Burt's parents announce they are moving to Belgium one month before the baby is expected to arrive, the young couple decides to travel around to different areas of the country.They hope to see if they want to live near relatives or old friends, since they have nothing to tie them down to any particular location. Their ultimate hope is to find the perfect place to set down their own roots and raise their child properly.
Verona's parents are deceased, and her only surviving relative is her sister. Verona avoids talk of her parents, their death, and the home the two siblings still own, yet can't find the heart to sell.
Their journey begins in Phoenix, where Verona's old friend/boss (Alison Janney) Lily lives with her dour husband (Jim Gaffigan) Lowell and their two slacker kids. Verona's sister lives in nearby Tuscon, so it seems like America's Southwest might be a good fit. One afternoon with the dysfunctional Lily and Lowell encourages Burt and Verona to try elsewhere, including Madison, Wisconsin where Burt's quasi-relative LN (pronounced "Ellen"), played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, lives a Bohemian life with her two kids and a hippie husband named Roderick (Josh Hamilton). Things don't work out there, either, so Burt and Verona move on to Toronto, where their old married couple college friends live with a stable of adopted children.
Burt and Verona like it in Toronto, but take another detour when Burt finds out his Miami brother's wife has left him a single dad, so they travel to Florida to console him. The story reaches its end as Burt and Verona vow (without actually getting married) to continue loving and supporting each other and their child. They also make a tough, yet poignant decision as to where they will live out their lives together.
Away We Go is a sweet and honest tale, very much like an assembly of life's postcards. Every single acting performance is excellent, including Catherine O' Hara, Jeff Daniels, Alison Janney, Jim Gaffigan and others, but it is Maggie Gyllenhaal's comedic turn as a new-age ultra-progressive mom opposed to strollers and everything else conservative that provides some of the funniest moments I've seen in any "road" movie.
The sweetest surprise in
Away We Go is Maya Rudolph, better known for her hundreds of comedy characters on
Saturday Night Live. Rudolph proves she can act without overacting, and delivers one of the best performances of the year.
Another pleasant surprise is the direction and cinematic effort by director Sam Mendes. For a while I was beginning to think the creative force behind
American Beauty and
Revolutionary Road was bent on making films meant to destroy the illusion of happy families and marriages. It's nice to see some optimism among Mendes' otherwise depressing body of work.
One small complaint I have with
Away We Go is the reason it got its R rating. For such a sweet movie, it would have been better to leave such a racy sexual scene out, or at least leave a little more to our imagination. I'm not talking about nudity here, but about taste (literally...those who witness the very first scene will know what I'm talking about).
