Away We Go
2009-06-05
By Sergio A. Mims
CAST: Maya Rudolph
John Krasinski
Maggie Gyllenhall
Jeff Daniels
Catherine O’ Hara
Carmen Ejogo
Allison Janney
Jim Gaffigan
Paul Schneider
WRITTEN BY: Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida
DIRECTED BY: Sam Mendes
**** FOUR STARS
Simplicity is perhaps the hardest trick to pull off in movie. If done too lightly it runs the risk of making the film boring and if overdone it becomes laughable and trite. The remarkable, extraordinary, very funny and touching new comedy drama, Away We Go, pulls off the feat of simplicity with a master’s touch. Directed by Sam Mendes, more known for his pretentious and ponderous dramas such as the recent Revolutionary Road, Jarhead and The Road to Perdition, Away We Go represents a radical departure for him.
It’s a highly comic, lightweight, beautifully realized gem of a film. A perceptive film about relationships and how they affect you and about growing up, no matter how old you are, and finding your own special purpose and place in the big wide beautiful world. Mendes hits exactly the right tone and nuances for the film. Nothing is too underplayed or broadly exaggerated. He skillfully keeps the entire film, which is built on a simple and effective premise, tightly under control so when the big comic moments come they hit you with full gale force and the sober, tender scenes quietly affecting and touching. He nimbly pulls off the almost impossible trick of blending the comic moments with the more serious scenes without jarring, sudden, gear shift awkward changes of lesser films.
The film centers around an eccentric couple, wonderfully played by Maya Rudolph (of Saturday Night Live) and her goofball nerdy significant other ( John Krasinski from TV’s The Office) who are
eccentric, aging free spirits who are a only a few months away from the arrival of their first bundle of joy. After a riotous dinner one night at the home of Krasinski’s nutcase, deliriously self centered parents (O’Hara and Daniels), the couple realizes that it’s long past time to get their act together.
So, with the excuse of a previously arranged job interview in Wisconsin, our intrepid couple go off on a unplanned trip across the country.
Their plan is to make stopovers along the homes of relatives and friends in the hopes of finding a permanent, stable place to live, and unconsciously looking for the perfect family that they hope to emulate. What follows instead is a series of hilarious adventures and pensive moments as they encounter one dysfunctional family after another. Even one brief sojourn in Montreal with old college friends and their rainbow coalition family signing songs from the Sound of Music is revealed to have it own hidden sorrow.
In her first major film role Rudolph is fantastic as Krasinski’s very pregnant partner. On the surface all rationality and calm, yetunderneath a raging torrent of self doubt and insecurity. She’s the rock for Krasinski’s naïve and eternally optimistic character.
They’re greatly assisted by some dead on brilliant performances by O’Hara, Daniels and a standout comic performance by Allison Jenny who plays Rudolph’s ex-boss. Carmen Ojogo, who has a few scenes as Rudolph’s younger sister In Tucson, is terrific in a shopping scene that is both measured and poignant.
But no doubt, one of many highlights of the film involves Gyllenhall, playing a former childhood friend of Krasinski now a university professor and a far out, ridiculously” new agey”, neo-hippie with weird ideas about child rearing and psychotic aversion to strollers.
Away We Go, without question Sam Mendes’ best film to date and one of the best films of the year, is a wonderfully exhilarating movie abut relationships, hopes, disappointments and the dream that there’s always a happy ending right around the next corner
Film critic, lecturer and festival consultant Sergio Mims covers all things film from the city that works, Chicago. He is a regular contributor to EbonyJet.com.
