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Movie Review:
07/01/2009
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Away We Go” makes you smile – and think
Away We Go is a light summer comedy that asks a simple, but weighty question: What makes a family? The obvious answer is simple: Boy, in this case Burt Farlander (John Krasinski) meets Girl, Verona De Tessant (Maya Rudolph). They fall in love. And two unexpectedly become three. In films of past generations this would have been an oddball question: families weren’t “made” (except in the most literal sense), they just were, and regardless of who they were, they were still your family (“Don’t take sides with anyone against the Family…” Michael tells Fredo in The Godfather). But in more recent generations, films have been re-examining what “family” means, and pregnancy is usually the instigator, but not necessarily the definition. For Burt and Verona, they have the love, but it takes a road trip full of relatives, old friends, and “families” to help them discover and define their own. On the heels of emotional heavyweights like Revolutionary Road and Road to Perdition, Away We Go is a change of pace for director Sam Mendes—but he hides it well with a cast of talented comedians. Of course comedy comes easily to Krasinski, of “The Office” fame, and Rudolph, best known from “Saturday Night Live.” Burt (Krasinki) is a sweet, but overly naïve insurance futures salesman who wants nothing more than to be the perfect “dad” who “whittles” and “knows everything about the Mississippi River,” although he dresses more like an awkward 10-year-old and insists on answering his business calls with a bad John Madden impersonation (“they expect it from me,” he explains). Verona (Rudolph) is more levelheaded, older in both years and experience, although still vulnerable to all sorts of pregnancy angst. While they are a joy to watch for most of the film, where Krasinki and Rudolph (and consequently Burt and Verona) fall short are in the serious bits. They’re in unfamiliar territory and it shows; in scenes intended to be intimate and touching, their chemistry belly-flops and sincere dialogue seems to harden into rehearsed lines. Whether this is a casting issue, directing issue or acting issue is hard to say, but the mushy parts miss their mark by a mile—and the most touching and intimate scenes turn out to be the ones where Krasinki and Rudolph don’t actually say anything at all. For the generation who came of age when divorce rates were skyrocketing—the answer to what makes a family isn’t the obvious one anymore. Screenwriter and author Dave Eggers, who co-wrote Away We Go with his wife Vendela Vida, premiered in the literary world with his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius about raising his younger brother after his parent’s unexpected deaths (he was 21, his brother was 8). Echoes of these same themes are at the heart of Away We Go: Family isn’t simply shared blood in your veins, and this is probably the least important component of the whole makeshift creation. Sarah Campbell is a Kenwood Press staff writer living in Phoenix, AZ. She is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University with a B.A. in screen writing. Email: sarah@kenwoodpress.com |
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