Movie #12: Away We Go (2009, Comedy)Bert and Verona, a long-term yet unmarried couple, moved from Chicago to live near Bert's parents. Three months before her due date, his parents (Catherine O'Hara, I love you! You have chosen some fantastic roles in recent years!) announce that they are going to move ... to Belgium. Longing for an extended family for their daughter, Bert and Verona embark on a journey in order to find the perfect place to raise a child.
I think what surprised me most about this movie is how well it works as en ensemble piece. As they travel from place to place, they meet family (both close and distant relatives) and friends in a series of vignettes. Allison Janey is a hilarious and wholly inappropriate former boss; Maggie Gyllenhaal is a free-breast-feeding, orgasmic-birth-pushing earth mother type. Seriously ... I don't think I've ever seen Maggie Gyllenhaal so, so funny.
In between destinations, John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph do a rather wonderful job of showing us Bert and Verona's love story. And ultimately the audience is reminded that love is really about people holding each other up, supporting each other through the slings and arrows of existence (wow, dramatic much?). Seriously, though. That's what love is, and this movie demonstrates that lesson beautifully.
My only bone to pick with the movie was the subplot about Verona's inability to deal with the death of her parents many years before. It just seemed too typical, I suppose, an unnecessary addition to a movie that was already filled to the brim with feelings and BIG TRUTHS. I came around, though, and found myself a little bit choked up as that particular thread reached its admittedly inevitable and predictable conclusion.
I laughed a lot and cried a little ... and felt better about the plight of humanity, just from watching two people do everything that they could to be good to one another.
Final Grade: A+
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