Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With the release of Andy Samberg’s Palm Springs and the latest Ghostbusters sequel getting pushed to 2021, we’re highlighting movies starring Saturday Night Live alumni.
Away We Go (2009)
Maya Rudolph has carved out a reasonably eclectic film career since leaving Saturday Night Live, with roles in several great comedies including Bridesmaids, MacGruber, and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. On the other hand, much of her post-SNL filmography has been dedicated to voiceover work, as well as recreating an old-fashioned variety-show sensibility—sketch-comedy cameos, guest shots, co-hosting an actual variety show—whenever possible. She also has four children with filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, which may have informed one of her too-rare starring roles in the 2009 dramedy Away We Go.
Rudolph plays Verona, one half of an expectant (and unmarried) couple with Burt (John Krasinski), whose idea of preparing for parenthood involves learning different types of knots, taking a “family defense” class, and taking up whittling, which he mistakenly refers to as “cobbling.” Verona, meanwhile, prepares by watching (and making fun of) a pregnancy exercise video and wondering aloud if she and Burt are fuck-ups, given that they’re thirtysomethings without plenty of “basic stuff” figured out yet. When Burt’s parents announce their plans to abscond to Belgium for two years rather than help out with the baby, this family of two (and change) takes a trip to decide where to move next, with an eye toward putting down roots.
A substantial chunk of the stops on this trip involve brazen caricatures, most notably Allison Janney whooping it up as a crass, filter-free livewire at a Phoenix dog track and Maggie Gyllenhaal viciously satirizing nouveau-hippie, stroller-free helicopter parenting in Madison, Wisconsin. Even with Paul Schneider, Melanie Lynskey, Chris Messina, and Carmen Ejogo leavening the cartoonish quality in their scenes, it’s easy to understand why the movie, written by husband-and-wife novelists Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, was dinged for hipster condescension when it came out. (A.O. Scott memorably opined, “this movie does not like you.”)
That seems debatable; after all, what irritates hipsters more than the feeling that they are expected to identify with a character? But what really gives dimension to the family tourism is Rudolph’s unshowy but rich performance as a woman who feels both ahead of schedule and well behind. Although she’s known for her outsized sketch-comedy personalities, Rudolph spends much of Away We Go time quietly working out her fears and insecurities as she watches other families try to do the same thing, whether earnestly or with unearned confidence. She downshifts her voice to a softer tone, to the point where one of comedy’s best mock belters whisper-sings a lullaby of “Mr. Tambourine Man.” It’s a performance so sensitive and plainspoken that she makes Krasinski’s lightly buffoonish character more likable just by looking at him with affection—even when she announces, “your pregnant girlfriend is going to kill you.”
Away We Go is part of a loose, unofficial trilogy of domestic strife movies from one-time wunderkind Sam Mendes, an epilogue less lacerating than the suburban malaise of American Beauty or Revolutionary Road. It’s no accident that there’s a running gag about Verona’s worry that she and Burt haven’t had fights intense enough to raise their pre-baby’s heart rate above “chill”; this is the rare movie about couplehood that doesn’t gin up personality conflicts for its drama. Instead, it addresses new-parent anxieties with plainspoken clarity. It’s also, admittedly, the kind of semi-indie that only filmmakers with a pre-existing pedigree can really get away with—a modest, unassuming product of obvious privilege. Again, Rudolph comes to the rescue. How often are SNL figures called upon to serve as a grounding presence, and how often do they succeed as consistently as she does here?
Availability: Away We Go is currently streaming on Starz, DIRECTV, and Fandor. It’s also available to rent from Amazon, Google, Apple, and YouTube.
45 Comments
I like this movie a lot. It’s not doing anything revolutionary, but it goes down smooth.
maya as diana ross is one of my faves! i have no idea if that’s really how diana is…i hope it is.
The way Maya (as Diana) says the word, “hoosegow” is one of my favorite things of all time.
& all her versions of “tina!”
Between this and The Circle I’m beginning to think that Dave Eggers is not a good writer.
I swear, “The Circle” should’ve been the easiest movie in the world to get right (Imagine “The Firm”, but at Google). You could throw that premise at one of those screen-writing bots and get a halfway decent movie. And somehow they mucked it up.
I kind of liked “The Circle”. But then I also liked “Antitrust” which was the techfirm paranoia film made when Microsoft was the Big Evil in the tech world.
You didn’t find it a heartbreaking work of staggering genius?
I feel like AV Club writers are just making up streaming networks to prank the readers. “Fandor?” That’s a rejected Lord of the Rings character.
It’s actually an Ewok fanclub, thank you very much!
“Quibi” was pretty amazing. It supposedly stood for “quick bites”, as though “bites” was pronounced “beets”, but the only real word “Quibi” brings to mind is “quibble”, something as small and pointless as Quibi. So, really, perfect all around.
I thought it was a Neverending Story streaming service.Ill just buy the first one, thanks.
Or a kingdom! JRR sure loved the syllable “dor” and used it whenever he could. And we know that not just because of how many times he used it — in an essay he even claimed that the phrase “cellar door” in terms of sound was the most beautiful in the English language.
The Maggie Gyllenhaal character hit home for me at the time this came out because I worked with a woman who sincerely held the same beliefs and acted in the same manner.She was married to this wannabe denim designer and gave her kid the hilariously idiotic name Neon Shadow.
Man this might raise some hackles, but I roll my eyes at parents who use their children to express their (parents’) nonconformity—which in my personal experience is usually pretty performative. When it comes to such a basic responsibility as giving them a name, I wanted my children’s names to be such that it would give them the optimum chance of fitting in… if later they decided ‘fitting in’ is not what they want to do (as they likely will at some point), I’ll support them, but I’d rather give them the chance to fit in and then they decided they don’t want to, rather than the inverse.
Oh totally. It’s like, have some fucking empathy for the amount of shit your kid is going to cop for having either a stupid name or a “unique” spelling.
I will say two fairly contradictory things:(1.) The Maggie Gyllenhaal character struck me as a pretty mean caricature when I first saw this movie, and she still does, but now that I have a kid, I’m also like, well, it’s not an *unfairly* mean caricature. (And most of the parents I’ve met are lovely, but I certainly understand the type of person they’re making fun of in that sequence, and Gyllenhaal sure does too!)
(2.) When you’re a parent, almost anything you do that doesn’t fit non-parents’ ideas of what child-raising is like garners eyerolls from them. Sure, a lot of “unique” names are faintly-to-extremely ridiculous, and there’s a lot of weirding of otherwise probably pretty normal kids in the name of a parenting philosophy like the extreme stuff in this movie. At the same time, the whole business of “giving them the optimum chance of fitting in”… it’s a losing battle. One person’s totally normal name is some other kid’s easy target—or your kid could wind up as the one Michael in a kindergarten class full of Destiny, Jebediah, Charleston Chew, Madysyn, and Atkinson. It’s like having your kid wear all beige because that’s neutral and they can decide for themselves later what they like. You make choices as a parent. You just do. It happens. And no matter what choice you make, someone is going to judge you for it. So calculating what will make your kid the most normal is a fool’s errand, IMHO. But maybe I’m just still sore about how the AVC ran a thoughtful piece a few years ago about non-children’s music we play for our kids and half the comments let us know we were insufferable pretentious assholes for not just playing the Wiggles on a loop until we all went insane, because that’s the “normal” thing to do. My point is, parenting *will* involve broadcasting your taste, whether it’s in the clothes you pick out, the name you choose, the music you play, whatever. And there will always be childless people on hand to say, ugh, why can’t you just be normal. So, you know, I don’t wanna name my kid Rocketshyp or whatever, but none of these small matters of taste are going to be the decisions that really matter in your kid’s life.
(And please understand, I don’t mean this personally; I totally get what you’re saying and I don’t mean to single you out; it’s just a sentiment I see a lot from non-parents.)
Well put. I definitely see post-Covid kids being WAY different than pre-Covid kids. It’s way bigger than pre- and post-Internet. These kids will be born into a world that interacts even more differently than social media kids.
Jesse, clearly your hackles have been raised. Now, I don’t want to go off on a rant here,
The great thing about super basic names is that they both allow the kid to fit in, and provide a sort of “blank slate” if the kid does want to project some kind of unique persona to the world.“Joe” can be anyone. But a lot of people are going to have some preconceived ideas about “Neon Shadow” or “Soleil Moon Frye.”
Wow, you really weren’t afraid to “raise some hackles” and skewer those nattering nabobs of baby-namery with the opinion we all share already! Bravissimo, you’re the hero of the hour!
I have vague recollections of this film, and the scenes in Madison reminded me a lot of the nearly four years I lived there. I didn’t know a lot of people like that woman at first, but when I moved a block or so off of Willy Street with my gf that world expanded a whole lot.
Okay, now I have to see this movie. Madison doesn’t really get much cinematic presence even if it is basically Portland with worse weather. Is it really filmed in Madison or is it one of those things where you have to believe Southern California is Madison?
Unless the kid grew up to be a synthwave album.
On the plus side, naming subsequent children would be easy for Ms. Shadow. She could name the next kid Argon, and then Krypton (although that might be confusing for people who know more about comic books than chemistry).
This was the first movie my wife and I saw together in the theater.
We’ve since watched it every single Valentine’s Day, which means I’ve seen Away We Go twelve times, and my appreciation for it has only grown. It’s one of the sweetest, most honest stories about a relationship I’ve ever seen in any medium.Burt and Verona are a happy couple for the entire movie. That’s not a small thing. No false complications arise, they don’t get into a big fight and separate for a while, neither of them cheats or is tempted to cheat. They’re a team from beginning to end. This happens all the time in real life, but is much rarer in movies.
Aww. I think I remember reading that on your Letterboxd or Twitter or something and it’s such a lovely sentiment.
Man, I found this to be a step above North in terms of the “let’s visit random archetypal characters” travelogue movie. Just didn’t click with me at all.
This is a wonderfully and quiet little film. It’s one I remember for the performances, and overall feel of the film. It was so easy to relate to her character’s feelings, in that I too have felt like a fuckup who should have her shit together by now. I always recommend this one.
Considering American Beauty aged horribly (even before we knew what we know now about Kevin Spacey) and Revolutionary Road was just ridiculous, it’s funny how Away We Go kind of became my favorite of Mendes’ “trilogy”.
There are so many things I really like about this movie. Rudolph’s warmth, the absurd but not terribly exaggerated parenting examples, Melanie Lynskey’s excruciating sublimated sadness, the film’s general look and sound.
And then the whole damn search for a home ends with the revelation that they owned a(n inherited) fricking MANSION the whole damn time.
Yeah, it’s kind of a copout. I will say, it’s a large and somewhat rundown home in the middle of (seemingly) nowhere, where they don’t seem to know anyone else in the area, so I sort of get why it wasn’t on the table as a living option. And the movie never frames their search for a home as being about financial limitations; they both seem gainfully employed without a lot of expenses, so it’s not like they’re desperate for affordable housing and ignoring this house. But, yeah, that is what I mean about it coming from a place of privilege. The movie seems uninterested in the financial realities of having a child.
Wasn’t this movie initially panned for being Hipster Derivative, as it were?
Ah, yes. Quite pithy.
My opinion is that Maya Rudolph is pretty obviously human, but that may be a little progressive for A.V. Club.
I don’t want to agree with the CW that your work only gets interesting once you leave SNL, because it’s not always true (especially for many of the ‘70s and ‘80s cast members), but in the case of Maya and a lot of the cast who were there when Maya was, I’d say it was definitely true. She’s a fascinating presence and I keep meaning to check out more of her shows and films.
Is that the CW?! I feel like a lot of people who were beloved on the show don’t fare so well outside of it. That said, there are some where I think that’s true. I like Wiig in Bridesmaids more than like 85% of her SNL stuff, which is really heavy on tics and easy laughs (which makes sense because she is naturally funny, but I prefer her in a different register). I felt similarly about Molly Shannon. Hell, even Horatio Sanz, who was sometimes funny on the show, I’d see absolutely killing it at UCB at the same time that he was becoming sort of a nuisance on SNL.Rudolph strikes me as someone who feels especially at home on the show; I feel like she’d rather be doing SNL than doing most movies, so a lot of her finest work comes from there… but at the same time, I do think there’s an unexplored depth there and I’d love to see her in more movies that take advantage of that.
I think it is for performers of the last 10-15 years – a fair amount of early coverage of Barry seemed to be couched in how you couldn’t have expected a show like that from the guy who played Stefon, for instance. I agree that it is true in some cases – Wiig’s performance in Skeleton Twins is so much better than most of her last 4-5 years on SNL, it’s almost hard to believe it’s the same person. I think Maya’s era of SNL people have never fully left the show, somehow (Fred Armisen cameos what feels like 5000 times a year), maybe because they were one of the first casts who were able to genuinely enjoy themselves rather than the place being a war zone. I wish I’d watched her variety show – I was on a hiatus from SNL then and never heard of it. If we end up getting Kamala cameos I hope she might host again too – last year I watched the episode she hosted and she was great, with maturity added to the energy she’d always had as a cast member. I’d also like to see her in more movies. I keep meaning to watch that Amazon show she did with Fred.
I cannot tell at all from that review if you are recommending that we see the film.
Well, your first hint is that it’s a “Watch This” feature and not a regular review. I’m recommending it on the basis of Rudolph’s performance and a lot of other things I like about it. But it’s not an unqualified rave.
Well, they probably aren’t going to let you file it under a “Maybe Watch This, We Do Not Know” heading. So many of us are contrarian, we might be more likely to read that feature.
As noted, it is in “Watch This.” However, you shouldn’t actually watch it. AO Scott was right; it’s not good.
I love this movie and watch it whenever I’m sick in bed. It’s funny, comforting, silly and sad. Maya Rudolph is so beautiful and likeable, it doesn’t get old to me.
I would like to point out that she is SEVEN YEARS OLDER than Krasinski. I don’t know if this is remarked upon in the movie, but if not, must be some kind of Hollywood first.
I can’t help but think they’re inadvertently terrible by deciding to move to Montreal but then changing their minds after finding out that Melanie Lynskey keeps miscarrying.