Away We Go

 
by KYW's Bill Wine
 
And away they go.
 
The two leads in Away We Go, an intimate serio-comic road movie without a car chase or a special effect in sight, are TV notables about to make a much bigger splash on the big screen as a result of their joint portrayal of thoroughly believable thirtysomethings expecting their first child.
 
John Krasinski, best known for his work on "The Office," and Maya Rudolph, best known for her contributions to "Saturday Night Live," play insurance salesman Burt and pregnant medical illustrator Verona, the unmarried Colorado couple in search of a place to put down roots while they await the birth three months from now.
 
Away We Go is an episodic comedy-drama about these financially insecure parents-to-be, who are not only interested in deciding where they should live but how they should live.  They are obviously devoted to each other, even though the thoughtful and serious-minded Verona keeps turning down good-natured Burt's marriage proposals.
 
As their North American odyssey takes them to such potential home towns as Phoenix, Tucson, Madison, Montreal, and Miami, each stop exhibits for them a possible scenario for their future -- most of them nightmarish in some way, thanks to the eye-opening and eyebrow-raising peculiarities (many of them related in some way to parenting) of the folks they're visiting.
 
They drop in on an array of eccentric friends (Allison Janney, Jim Gaffigan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Josh Hamilton, Melanie Lynskey, Chris Messina) and quirky relatives (Jeff Daniels, Catherine O'Hara, Carmen Ejogo, Paul Schneider), many of whom offer willy-nilly life lessons in what-not-to-do family dysfunction. 
 
Director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead) follows his recent Revolutionary Road with yet another portrait of a couple's literal and figurative search for some version of the American Dream.
 
But this time he loosens his directorial grip, taking a more lighthearted approach by allowing humor rather than pathos to do most but not all of the heavy lifting as he arranges an almost casual progression of vignettes.
 
Exploring the universal fears of commitment and parenthood, the screenplay by (married novelists) Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida has its moments of hilarity and its moments of poignancy, and director Mendes varies the tone, sometimes following up a slapstick scene with a melodramatic flourish.
   
This certainly keeps things interestingly unpredictable even as it undermines the narrative momentum and dramatic build.
 
But it's the low-key performances and genuine rapport of Krasinski and Rudolph, each of whom exhibits a gift for light comedy in the service of creating a character who seems well worth spending time with, that gives Away We Go its appeal.  The co-protagonists remain grounded and convincingly three-dimensional even when the secondary characters dancing around them seem grotesquely caricatured or otherwise overdrawn.
 
So we'll put down roots in 2½ stars out of 4 for an uneven but seemingly heartfelt journey.  Away We Go is a warmly absorbing, small-scale dramedy that, although escapist, aims to comment on life as lived, and should please moviegoers hoping to duck under the larger-than-life fireworks of the summer blockbusters.