Go See "Away We Go"

It was a great movie. Very sweet, very cute. It follows the couple Bert and Verona as they travel around the country (and one stop into Canada) to find a perfect place to raise their child after Bert's parents decide to move to Belgium the month before the baby is due.

Bert is your typical lovable John Krasinski character, almost reminiscent of Jim from The Office. He works selling insurance futures from the phone and adopts an interesting voice whenever a client calls him. At the very beginning of the movie, the pregnancy doesn't scare him. He seems to care more about whether his girlfriend will keep her breast size after the birth. Verona is Bert's girlfriend (she refuses to marry him though she promises to stay with him forever) and is pretty big for her term (at one point she is turned down a flight because the airline people think she is more than eight months pregnant when she is only six). Her parents died when she was in college and a decade later she still finds it hard to talk about it.

In looking for the perfect place to live, the pair go around the country meeting up with old friends and relatives to see if the cities are where they want to settle down. Each city gives the couple an different perspective on children. First there's Verona's old boss. She constantly ridicules her kids and her husband is part creepy, part lame, and too many parts just weird. At one point he starts talking about Arizona going through a drought and lists off the order of extinction that would happen. In the second city they meet up with Verona's sister, but not before an interesting and hilarious encounter with a uptight, alway teaching mother and her slightly-off son. Then they go off to Madison, where they meet up with Bert's carzy, ultra-feminist "cousin" (though one conversation makes it seem like they're a bit closer related than that). Hilarity ensues. Next is Montreal where the audience is introduced to the perfect family, but, of course, not everything is what it seems. Lastly the pair visit Bert's brother whose wife recently left him and their young daughter.

What I enjoy about this movie is that each family has something wrong with it. It repeatedly, and at times almost heavy-handedly, drives home the fact that no childhood is going to be perfect. From crazy new-agers to frontal lobes being sliced off, there are so many things that can go wrong with raising children but many of the children who go through these things can lead well adjusted lives. If anything, the families that Bert and Verona meet serve as models of bad behavior or humbling experiences.

Some real life elements found their way into the script. Written by wife-husband duo Vendala Vida (author of Girls on the Verge and editor of The Believer) and Dave Eggers (author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), the script mirrors in a slight way the true life of Eggers. Like Verona, Eggers parents died while he was in college and he was charged with taking care of his little brother, much like it is implied that Verona took care of her younger sister.

Overall, I give this movie a B. Heavy-handed at times, it was still heartbreakingly sweet and gutbustingly hilarious. It could have used a bit more cohesiveness but nevertheless and entertaining film.

Go see it!