Away We Go

Away We Go Review

From director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Revolutionary Road) comes this bohemian guide to parenting; a film which does its best to tug on the heartstrings and present the morals which so many first time parents find hard to establish and implement themselves.

The film takes us on a journey across the United States as we join parents-to-be Burt and Verona attempt to decide just how they're going to raise their child in new age and contemporary America. The very idea of being pregnant comes as a shock to Verona (Maya Rudolph), but when she and Burt (John Krasinski) decide to keep the child they suddenly start questioning just how they would approach parenthood in a world full of mixed messages of sex, marriage and how to raise children.

Along their journey, the couple come across childhood and college friends, each of whom has their own backhistory and their own methods of raising their children. Of those, they meet a couple who effectively disown their offspring and distance themselves where possible, an overly bohemian couple who quite blatantly follow a hippy lifestyle, a husband and wife who cannot conceive and so chose to adopt a quartet and give them the lives they had previously deemed impossible and the final chapter; a recently divorced father who cherishes everything his daughter does and stands for in his life.

Whilst the messages played to the audience are obvious and simply play up existing stereotypes, it's the relationship between Burt and Verona which moulds the film together. Their encounters with the different couples reflect in them what they need to understand and appreciate in order to better the life of their unborn child, Burt's brother proving in particular a poignant reminder that the child is more important than any indifferences between the parents.

Where Away We Go excels is in its simplified presentation. There is rarely a scene which overwhelms and whilst the stereotypes put forth to the audience are at times unnecessary, there is a certain quality about the subtle tragedies behind each chapter that brings the film above what would normally be a pedestrian film. There are definite similarities between this and Revoltionary Road in that they both share a frank sense of reality which soon dawns on the audience, but all that aside, this is a novel and refreshing piece from Mendes.

8/10