VIDEO: The trailer for Away We Go
Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida had a baby last December, their second, and congratulations for that. But not for this self-righteous, pseudo-hip, cutesy-wootsy, cringe-inducing screed, for which they wrote the screenplay and which Sam Mendes, further marking his descent from American Beauty, directed.
This is parenthood as narcissistic fetishism, as Burt (John Krasinski) and his pregnant girlfriend, Verona (Maya Rudolph), venture from their adorably funky trailer home to seek out the best place (spiritual as well as physical) to raise a child. They visit their oddball friends and relatives and check out their family lives and learn that there's no place like home — or words to that effect.
Full of the kind of twee whimsy that sounds the death knell for American independent filmmaking (Mendes's English origins notwithstanding), Away We Go also steeps in an acrid undertone of misogyny — all the bad guys are females with the wrong attitude toward motherhood.
