At one point in the comic drama “Away We Go,” directed by Sam Mendes, written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, screened at the Art Theatre, a pregnant Verona De Tessant (Maya Rudolph) asks her boyfriend Burt Farlander (John Krasinski) if they’re fuck-ups.
This because here they are unmarried, she 34, he 33, and, though they are gainfully employed, they live in what amounts to a hut with a cardboard window.
No, they’re not fuck-ups, they’re just contemplating an identity-to-come, that of parents. When they find out that Burt’s parents, Gloria (Catherine O'Hara) and Jerry (Jeff Daniels), for whose sake they live where they live, are moving to Belgium for two years, they find themselves rudderless.
So they decide to take a road trip, ostensibly to find a place to live but really, a way to live. When you take a vacation, it’s to get away, to not think of your present circumstances. When Verona and Burt take a trip, they filter it through where they are at that particular moment, which is to say, clueless.
And thus, everything they see gives them insight into what they’re getting themselves into. These characters could be any couple embarking on a great journey together. They not exceptional in any way. They’re the kind of people with whom you work, with whom you’ve gone to college; they’re your own relatives. Their lives are our lives, their choices are our choices.
It’s a quirky, idiosyncratic film, reminiscent of “Juno” and “Garden State.” Burt realizes that Verona is pregnant before she does. How? Um, through the sense of taste. A very-large-for-six months Verona can’t convince airline clerks that she’s six and not eight months on and so they have to travel by train. And Burt’s not-really cousin LN (as in “Ellen”) has a curious reason why she doesn’t believe in baby strollers.
The film’s structured as an odyssey. They don’t face monsters and demons, they face life.
In Phoenix they visit Verona’s former boss, the outrageously crude Lily (Allison Janney) and her stunned-into-silence husband, Lowell (Jim Gaffigan). They go to Tucson to visit Verona’s sister, Grace (Carmen Ejogo), who’s considering a relationship with a man with whom she’s got nothing in common. They go to Madison to visit Burt’s fake-cousin, the spacey, somehow functional LN (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and Roderick (Josh Hamilton).
In Montreal they visit college chums who, on the surface seem to have the perfect life. When the husband, drunk, confesses the sadness in his life - while his wife does an astonishing clothes-on pole dance - their seemingly perfect life loses its luster.
Finally, when they unexpectedly go to Miami because the wife of Burt’s brother Courtney (Paul Schneider) suddenly left him with a daughter, the point is pounded home: they can’t find succor and direction from sources external, they have to find it from within. Which sets up the lovely, affirmative, upbeat ending. The more they look around them, the more they realize that a) their pasts don’t provide any road maps and b) they have to stake their own claims to be happy.
Shows are at 5, 7 and 9 PM, Monday - Friday, with additional weekend shows at 2:45pm. The show runs until July 9. Tickets are $10-15. The Theatre is located at 2025 E. 4th St. For more information call 438-5435 or visit www.arttheatrelongbeach.com.
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