Sam Mendes’ sweet road trip movie, Away We Go, achieved something few other films have managed this year: a screaming belly laugh and actual tears of amusement, all with the simple expedient of some childish behaviour with a baby stroller.
As an examination of drifting thirtysomethings, unsure if they’re ‘fuckups’ or not, encountering a stream of stereotypical families as they careen across North America looking for a place to call home, it doesn’t exactly tread new ground. But Mendes’ great strength, here as in American Beauty, is not an original story but an original retelling.
Bert (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) live a semi-bohemian existence; she’s a freelance medical illustrator, he deals with insurance futures. She, not unwillingly, becomes pregnant, making the discovery in one of the most awkwardly sexually funny moments to be caught on camera.
They’re not self-consciously quirky or unusual, just mildly odd. Mild in particular compared with Bert’s disarmingly mad parents (Jeff Daniels playing the father of the character he’d once surely have played himself and a still Beetlejuice-wacky Catherine O’Hara). They blithely ask just ‘how black’ the baby is going to be given Verona’s ethnicity and suddenly announce their intention to leave town a month before their grandchild is born to live in Belgium for two years.
Given that the young couple only moved to that area to be near his parents, Verona points out that they could be anywhere. They settle on exploring Phoenix, Madison and Montreal, and so begins their journey.
At each turn they uncover a great parenting stereotype. First is the shrill, borderline alcoholic WASP-y bitch, loudly commenting on her daughter’s ‘dykey’ walk and her son’s protruding ears that ‘make him look like a trophy’. It’s a wickedly observed, virtuoso cariacature from Allison Janney, turning her Juno stepmother character up to eleven and wondering with genuine lack of insight about their inability to be welcomed by one of the ‘good’ golf clubs.
Next comes the earth mother, attachment parenting practitioner Maggie Gyllenhaal, who swoons with distaste at the thought of anything so corrosive as a stroller. And following close on her heels is the Brangelina family, a blissfully happy adoptive hodgepodge reminiscent of a Benetton ad that nonetheless has its own darker flipside.
The stereotypes are gleefully rendered, thoughtfully portrayed and genuinely funny or moving in their own ways. That it is unrealistic to think anyone would know such a remarkable cross section of parents is secondary to the fact that all share a hearty, comforting insanity of their own. The two central performances are so warm and gently understated that they provide a kernel of unkempt reality to cling to.
Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida achieve two important successes with their script, so lovingly brought to life with its indie, Transamerica feel by Mendes and co. Firstly they have crafted a genuinely very funny, watchable film. Secondly, and best of all, they’ve put a real-looking woman at the centre of the story.
Verona is not a arse-kicking hard-edged woman trying to prove herself. She’s not a Bridget Jones type crying prettily over lace-edged cots. Her pregnancy is acknowledged and wanted, and she obviously enjoys being around children, but it is not her defining characteristic. There’s no mining of pregnancy clichés, not a desperate 3am run for ice cream and pickles in sight. And when she sighs and comments that she’s tired of being large (her unusually sizable bump being constantly remarked upon), Bert’s response that he would love her even if she was so fat he couldn’t find her vagina makes him the object of ridicule, not her.
Released in the UK on the 18th of September, Away We Go is required viewing for anyone who’s every idly wondered if life could be better elsewhere, questioned if everyone else is secretly doing it better or indeed just feels like a good giggle.