Away We Go

Away We Go - Dir. Sam Mendes (2009)

Sam Mendes made his feature film debut with the Academy Award-winning American Beauty, a film that is practically the dictionary definition of the suburban malaise subgenre. Mendes would return to that subject matter with the relentlessly dour Revolutionary Road. Mendes decided to follow that up with lighter fare while still touching on similar topics with Away We Go. The screenplay was written by the husband-and-wife duo of Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida who likely tapped into their own lives for this dramedy about the anxiety of raising a family.

John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph star as Burt and Verona Farlander (get it?), an insurance salesman and a medical illustrator who await the birth of their first child. The couple is in their mid-30’s and live a low-budget Bohemian lifestyle in their ramshackle home. Verona’s parents passed away while she was in college and is apprehensive about becoming a mother. She worries that they are “fuck-ups” as she stares at a piece of cardboard where a window should be. They look towards Burt’s parents (played by Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara) for help with impending parenthood until Ma and Pa Farlander announce they’re moving to Belgium. With an anchor no longer tying them down, Burt and Verona head off for a road trip to find the perfect place for their unborn child’s upbringing.

Their quest first brings them to Phoenix where they meet Verona’s former boss, the loud and abrasive, Lily (Allison Janney), and her subdued and henpecked husband, Lowell (Jim Gaffigan). Their next stop is Madison, Wisconsin, where they stop by to see Burt’s old college friend, Ellen (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who is now an ultra-pretentious, New Age hippie professor known as LN. Along with her pony-tailed husband, LN still breast feeds her children and her whole family sleeps in one, big bed. She believes in having sex in front of them, but not in strollers. ”Why would I want to push my child away?” The trip takes a positive turn when they hit Toronto to visit Tom (Chris Messina) and Munch (Melanie Lynskey) who seem to be the most well-adjusted and content of their friends. They’re happily married and raising a large family of adopted children, but there’s pain hidden beneath their otherwise blissful exteriors.

Away We Go is like the Voltron of bad indie films. It’s as if they took five smaller independent films and combined them into one. Away We Go is full of self-consciously quirky situations set to a soundtrack of college radio folk rock. Almost everyone the Farlanders meet in the first half of the film are caricatures. Burt’s parents are self-absorbed and bourgeois, the others are wacky for wacky’s sake. When LN is introduced, the story veers way off course and into a whole other picture. Her character is so ridiculous it breaks any boundaries of believability. She also throws the film off-balance when the story shifts towards a more grounded and melancholy approach. The acting is strong across the board with Allison Janney being particularly funny as the obliviously obnoxious Lily. Krasinski displays the same goofy charm he does on The Office here and gives some of the film’s best moments during a pair of mock arguments in an attempt to get the fetus’s heart rate up. Maya Rudolph is the revelation of Away We Go. Most people will know Rudolph for her comedic talents on Saturday Night Live. Here, she displays a subdued sense of humor and a knack for the more dramatic scenes. But, the cast just isn’t enough to support the weight of a weak, derivative script that lacks any genuine emotion.

When Mendes departs from the suburbs, he can make some great films (Road to Perdition, Jarhead). He’s currently working on an adaptation of the Preacher comic book series with screenwriter John August. The project has been in development for years and I hope they can pull it off.

Rating: * 1/2