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Rudie Obias: “AWAY WE GO”: a review

14 June 2009 No Comment

When do you stop growing up? When are you the proper age to be considered an adult? 18? 21? 25? 35? For some, this is an ongoing process. Some feel too old to act immature yet others feel too young to take up real adult responsibilities. In the new film by Academy Award winning director, Sam Mendes and first time screenwriters, Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, this process is examined. AWAY WE GO follows the story of Verona played by Maya Rudolph (SNL), an artist having a baby with her long-term boyfriend, Bert, an insurance agent played by John Krasinski (THE OFFICE). The couple is very much in love but what happens when pregnancy forces them into adulthood.

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After the couple finds out that Bert’s parents (played wonderfully by Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara) are moving to Europe, missing the birth of their granddaughter, they decide to find a new place to live. Shortly after, they question if they are f*ckups at life. Both being in their early 30s and having a baby on her way, they struggle with “the basic” things of life. Wanting to be great parents but not having great examples themselves (Verona’s are dead and Bert’s are overbearing), they go on a road trip to find these great parental examples.

The film examines the theme in small vignettes. On they’re journey, they encounter the entire spectrum of child rearing you can imagine. In Arizona, with Lily (Allison Janney) and Lowell (Jim Gaffigan) who are vocally abusive and pretty much detached and thoughtless to their children. In Madison, they meet up with LN (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and Roderick (Josh Hamilton), the new age and overprotective hippie parents who smother their children. And in Montreal, they meet with Tom (Chris Messina) and Munch (Melanie Lynskey) the fun and outgoing couple who can’t have children of their own so the adopt (and boy, do they!). Everything goes smoothly until Bert gets a call from his brother, Courtney (Paul Schneider). His wife left him, leaving him the sole responsibility in raising their daughter, Annabelle.

But for as much as this film has going for it (a wonderful cast, great writers and an proficient director) it doesn’t capture an emotional connection between the story and the audience. The direction seems to be forced in the last third of the film. It asks the audience to continue along with the story on an emotional level but instead it falls flat. It cheaply conveys this by turning up the hipster indie folk songs and hoping the audience buys this. In the first two thirds of the film, it doesn’t quite earn such emotional heights thus making the pay off unsatisfying. Simply put, we are not invested.

I feel this might have worked better as a novel rather than a film. Seeing how this is from a very accomplished novelist. This is Dave Eggers’ first screenplay. In a book, we are already invested in the story and characters to make it to the last third of the book but in a film, it has to work in a shorter timeframe. Every moment has to hit its mark. I would hope for more with Eggers’ next screenplay, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. Mendes’ direction seems stale at times. This is shown in Rudolph’s final monologue, which actually sounds like a table reading in rehearsal. This film needed time to grow but the material presented didn’t give it time to grow up.