The J. and I originally went to the theater to watch 500 Days of Summer (which we did ... see above) but after the film, I stood in the lobby waiting for her to return from the bathroom and noticed that right in front of me Away We Go was about to start in ten minutes. While the movie intrigued us mildly because it was directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty and Revolutionary Road) and it featured Maya Rudolph in her first dramatic role, we figured it was ultimately DVD-worthy. Turns out we were right.
After a bit of hesitation, we decided to casually walk into the theater figuring that a bunch of 20 year olds on a Friday night aren't really going to care that a couple of middle-aged types are walking into a theater. The film wasn't bad but I think if we had actually paid money to see it, we would have been disappointed and if we had been watching it at home, we might have fallen asleep.
The basic premise is that Maya Rudolph and her beau, played by John Krasinsky (of The Office), find themselves on the verge of an unplanned journey into parenthood. Not sure where to raise their child, they decide to roam around visiting friends and family in Arizona, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Montreal, and Florida. The film is incredibly episodic ... the premise is the only thing that holds these episodes together and while there are a few interesting moments, the film overall just doesn't work as a film. In fact, I can't imagine this film being interesting to anyone who isn't expecting or thinking about having a child. If children are way in your past or way in your future (or maybe just not present at all) then this film is going to seem incredibly annoying.
This definitely feels like a message film -- that Sam Mendes wanted to somehow find a way that two people could become parents without becoming tools. If American Beauty and Revolutionary Road were treatises on the suffocating ennui of middle-aged, suburban life -- on how having kids and living in the suburbs will destroy your soul -- then Away We Go is the search for the antidote. It's a film about heading straight into middle-age while trying to find a way to escape all the trappings of being middle-age.
This is not a particularly new idea but it's been done better (Lawrence Kasdan's The Big Chill and Hal Hartley's Trust come immediately to mind). There's a thin line between a deeply personal film and a flawed, self-indulgent one. This definitely felt like the latter. I can respect Mendes' desire to work through these ideas, I just wish he didn't feel compelled to make
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I have no idea why vampires seem to be such a part of our zeitgeist. I do think there's some kind of connection but, alas, I think it will only reveal itself through history. I will conjecture, however, that the vampire fascination is closely linked with the zombie revival that's been a regular part of cinema for at least fifteen years. At the risk of revealing the extent of my geekiness, I like to think of the relationship between vampires and zombies as analogous to the relationship between elves and orcs (from The Lord of the Rings). |
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