Away We Go Takes the Low Road
Once in a blue moon, when two exceedingly beautiful people breed, the clashing of genes can result unfairly in a homely child. Even though “exceedingly beautiful” may not be the mot juste to describe the work of Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes and Pulitzer-Prize runner-up Dave Eggers, their brainchild, Away We Go, definitely falls into the category of ugly offspring. To make matters worse, a string of all-star indie actors including Maya Rudolph, John Krasinski, Allison Janney, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Paul Schneider, Catherine O’Hara, Jeff Daniels, and Melanie Lynskey still fail to imbue Away We Go with any substance.
Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski play Verona and Burt, domestic partners expecting their first baby. The opening shots portray the couple living in a trailer home in the mountains, huddling under thrift store blankets by a space heater, but when Burt’s parents announce they are moving abroad, Burt and Verona become unanchored and take off on a whirlwind tour of the nation in search of a new home. Within a few scenes it becomes obvious that money is no object to the couple, so why did the film work so hard in the opening montage to detail the tacky kitsch of their squalid abode? Was it just to reinforce that we are a watching a low-budget indie film?
Thus begins Away We Go, which never really finds any inertia. The parents’ relocation turns out to be the only conflict in the entire film: your run-of-the-mill first-baby-anxiety, and the option of moving to a new town. Dire, aye? The screenwriters, Dave Eggers and his real-life wife Vida Vendela, unable to give the movie direction or momentum, employ the tried-and-true novice screenwriter format—the road trip movie (in this case, involving planes, trains, and automobiles)—to give the audience a veritable story sampler rather than fleshing out any one thread. Burt and Verona hop from city to city, and in each place they visit friends and family who are steeped in various flawed scenarios of parenthood, ranging from verbally abusive alcoholics, to smothersome, over-parenting, to those who abandon their own children, to loving adoptive parents who still pine selfishly for children of their own. In fitting with Eggers’ prose, the main characters remain completely unflawed throughout the story, which makes them fundamentally uninteresting. Apart from their pristine personalities and enviable romance, Verona and Burt’s collective lack of flaws and the story’s omission of conflict make for a gutless movie.
On the surface, Away We Go is a film that examines parenting, the fears expectant parents have for their unborn children, and the search for a place to call home. The same could be said for The Road, Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, adapted to film by John Hillcoat for release later this year. McCarthy also wrote his “road trip” story based on fears for his first child, but in his vision, the world is in the throes of apocalypse, and the main character and his son must travel the road in flight from starvation and cannibals. The grim scenario inevitably raises much more complex questions about parenting than merely “what kind of parent should I be?” but questions whether bringing a child into the world is even ethical, and, if the shit hits the fan, is it best to go on for the sake of your child or put them out of their misery? Obviously, Away We Go was intended to be a very different kind of story than The Road, but both narratives were born from the same basic human fear. But where McCarthy’s story leads to great sweeping themes about the nature of hope and humanity, Eggers and Vida leave us with little more than empty promises.
Director Mendes, the Brit determined to tell American stories, does deliver some of the caustic humor that caught our attention in American Beauty, and a few of the characters are quite memorable, namely Allison Janney and Maggie Gyllenhaal who give stellar performances as despicable mothers, but the tone was uneven throughout, and the biting humor was made vulgar by moments of undiluted sweetness. The film also suffered from suffocating indie rock that swelled up over each scene and dictated the tone with an iron fist. The whole thing came off as amateur, and even though the dream team production credits may entice you, skip this indie wannabe. –Christianne Hedtke
Director: Sam Mendes
Writer: Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida.