With director Sam Mendes, you can always expect the unexpected. He has done the dark comedy (American Beauty), the gangsta flick (Road to Perdition), the brutally introspective (Jarhead) and the off-beat drama (Revolutionary Road).

In an age when most prefer to play safe, he is happy experimenting with genres. And that's worthy of admiration. In Away We Go as well, Mendes walks a different path, crafting a movie that smells like a road flick but is actually a drama without drama.

Film: Away We Go (Drama)
Cast: John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph, Jeff Daniels, Josh Hamilton
Director: Sam Mendes
Duration: One hour and 35 minutes

Critic Rating:

Middle-aged and middle-class, Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) aren't married but certainly a couple. The first scene shows a head bobbing up and down beneath the sheets with Burt making loud noises as if eating a hot pickle. We soon get to see the after-effects of that amorous night – Verona's six-month swollen tummy that looks it has an eight-month baby inside.

The journey towards parenthood evokes a host of emotions in the couple: none stronger than anxiety. And when Burt's parents surprise them by announcing that they are moving to Antwerp for a couple of years, they know that changing diapers at 2 am isn't going to be their only problem. As the two embark on a journey that takes them to places like Phoenix, Tucson, Madison, Montreal and Miami (in that order), they seem to discover more about life and togetherness. In the end, there's no great illumination. But perhaps more understanding, more wisdom that might help them sail the choppy seas of parenthood together.

Away We Go has some masterly old soundtracks from George Harrison, Bob Dylan and Lou Reed. Languidly paced, it has symmetry all its own. But in the end, it is like a could-have-been-good flick that leaves you less than satisfied and vaguely unfulfilled. We really don't know what the two protagonists are looking for. Their friends and relatives – Verona's friend who can't speak a sentence without using the F-word, the breast-feeding pal who hates rollers and a relative who philosophises as he pours syrup over toast, "You have to be willing to make the family from whatever" – don't seem characters from everyday life but plucked from the margins. Perhaps, Mendes is trying to tell us, each to his own. That's a good philosophy to live with. But you need not watch a weekend movie to know that.


Courtesy : timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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