Away We Go

"We're Completely Untethered, Burt!"

Burt Farlander (John Krasinski) and Verona de Tessant (Maya Rudolph) are two professionals in their mid-30's living in a single-wide in the woods—he sells insurance futures, she illustrates medical texts—he wants to get married and she doesn't; they're having a baby. That almost changes everything. They go and break the happy news to his parents (Catherine O'Hara and Jeff Daniels) who have suddenly decided to live in Belgium a month before the baby is due.

That changes everything. Because without grand-parental responsibilities*, Burt and Verona can live anywhere in the world with their kid, near anyone they want to. And so begins an Odyssey of sorts to find the perfect place to be a family.

"Away We Go" is a bit of a deceptive title. There are several ways they can go, and the film boils down to episodes where they can look on with horror at possible futures.

1. "Away to Phoenix:" they visit Verona's former editor (an hysterical Allison Janney) and her family; the kids are off-world zombies, paid no heed by the parents who are crass alcoholics with no life.

2. "Away to Tucson:" they visit Verona's sister (Carmen Ejogo), who works at a resort, attachment-proof, and has the impropriety to bring up Mom and Dad to Verona.

3. "Away to Madison:" they visit an "aunt" LN (Maggie Gyllenhaal), whose life-style is healthy, pretentious and stifling—"No separation, no sugar, no strollers" (sure, it sounds good, but in practice it's a fascist nightmare)

4. "Away to Montreal:" they visit college friends (Chris Messina and Melanie Lynskey) who have an adopted, well-adapted multi-cultural family for whom the parents are caring and giving but conceal a secret pain.

5. "Away to Miami:" Burt's brother (Paul Schneider) has an emergency—his wife has left him, leaving the care of his young daughter solely to him, which terrifies him.

The scenario's veer from the uproarious to the melancholy, each one holding up a mirror to Burt and Verona about nightmare scenarios that could conceivably be their future. The laughs are plentiful, pierced occassionally by sadness. Sure, it's a Sam Mendes film ("American Beauty," "Road to Perdition," "Revolutionary Road"), but it's the first time Mendes has directed out and out comedy—you can't expect him to go completely slapstick after those studies in tragedy.

But, it's the sweetness you remember—Mendes is the most heavy-handed of directors to the point of oppression (and he still can't go a whole movie without his cold null-center compositions), but "Away We Go" breathes a bit with the light touch that consummate ad-libbers Krasinski and Rudolph bring to the playing. The other characters verge into caricature (with O'Hara and Daniels together, how can it not?), but Mendes' two stars have quicksilver abilities to exploit the comedy in potentially sticky situations. Krasinski's man-boy who likes to play grown-up is a perfect match for him, and Rudolph is one of the few SNL alum's who can sustain an entire character for an entire movie. It's a trifle, but it's the first movie the director has made that makes you want to order a bullet chaser with your popcorn.

"Away We Go" is a Matinee.

* "It's not like your parents are doing anything," Burt deflects Verona. "My parents are dead," she reminds him. (pause) "Still..," he starts to argue.

Leatherheads

That Sunday Night Feeling

A director's got to love a project...I mean, really love it... before they devote two to three years of their life, and millions of dollars to it. Maybe the incentive is financial, maybe it's prestige, or getting something someone else wants. But you have to wonder what George Clooney saw in "Leatherheads," his "football at the dawn of the pro's" movie. It can't have been financial, although there would probably be a number of ticket-buyers who would go see him or Renee Zellweger in anything. I'm sure there wasn't a bidding war on it, and the studios tend to thumb their nose at "period pictures" (although that's all Clooney's directed so far) because they cost more than a modern-day movie. But Clooney can make any movie he wants as long as he's in front of the camera.

Why this?

Maybe it's a love of football, or the time-frame when liquor sales were banned and speakeasy's were the black-market--when the country was suffering and needed heroes, and when nobody looked twice if you broke the rules...because there weren't any. College football was the game, and pro-football was only for those lugs who never grew up. We believed in heroes hook, line and sinker, and didn't question anything. Life was tough enough. Was that it? Or does Clooney just get his jollies pulling off a movie-trick like making you believe you're really watching a movie set in the '30's, down to the cars, the wardrobe, and the fast way with lines that makes you realize you missed a joke two lines back on the way to the capper. Is it a tribute to Hawks? What is this amiable mutt of a movie?

It works, of course, because Clooney is a good director who's willing to stretch and teach at the same time. He's an artistic director who pulls things off like comic timing and the way a joke is told just by the way it's framed and by the stillness of the thing. He's a director of grace notes that linger because it would just be too sad to waste that held moment that might define a character or make a third-string player a second-string player, and he loves his cast--he knows that the best part of John Krasinski is he's got the wide open face of Gary Cooper hiding something, and he knows that Renee Zellweger should only be doing comedy, pinch-faced or not, because she looks like a kewpie-doll but she's got an iron spine and a zinger of a talent for timing--she's our Jean Arthur.

Or maybe because it's just another in a string of movies about people who do what they have to because it's their nature, and even if they take a flyer, it's worth it because they wouldn't have it any other way, no matter the cost. Because to not do it, would mean compromising their soul. Whether its Danny Ocean, or Edward R. Murrow, or Chuck Barris, or Michael Clayton, or Bob Barnes or Dodge Connelly. Or George Clooney. You do it because its yours to do. And you don't want to wake up on Monday morning knowing you missed your chance.

It's when you know you've grown up.

"Leatherheads" is a Matinee.