I really envy Burt and Verona. They are so smart, so self-righteous, so superior to the rest of us. It’s enough to make one ill, and their sanctimonious attitudes come close to succeeding in "Away We Go," opening here today.
John Krakowaki (Burt) and Maya Rudolph (Verona) are a young couple, thinking about getting married and not very far from welcoming their first child. They desperately want to be perfect parents and a perfect couple, so they travel around the country visiting friends and relatives, supposedly seeking role models. From their Olympian vantage point, however, they are obviously unable to find anything except bad examples – and they find many.
Director Sam Mendes, working from a screenplay by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, who probably use some autobiographical details, seems to again be caricaturing Americans from his superior English position, and he again seems to be talking down to us. That’s his privilege, though I think he’s mostly incorrect in his attitude, but not all of us on this side of the Atlantic are the types that he seems think represent us.
Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara, as Burt’s parents, are a pair of ninnies, and Allison Janney, as a former boss of Verona, is a prime example of a common scold, and so is her husband, played by Jim Gaffigan. Maggie Gyllenhaal is fine as an earth-mother type still hanging onto her hipness, and living in Madison, Wis., a community filled with hand-holds from which to hang. Lots of other characters, too, none with the qualities that make Burt and Verona so special.
Opens today at the Tivoli
-Joe