Bradford Pearson

My Case For: Away We Go

Away We Go fails in many, many ways.

So first, a few facts:

-The movie scored 46 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. This is not a good score.

- “You may very well enjoy Away We Go more than I did. But rest assured that you will never love this movie as much as it loves itself,” Christopher Orr, The New Republic

It has a predictable ending, the characters are too quirky for their own good, and it’s soundtracked by borefest Alexi Murdoch. But if you go into the theater thinking “Okay, I’m going to have super-low expectations for the next two hours,” the movie is actually not only palatable, but quite enjoyable.

The main reason? Maya Rudolph.

(Okay, so I should’ve titled this post “My Case For: Maya Rudolph in the Dave Eggers-written, Sam Mendes-directed ‘Away We Go’,” but that seemed kind of long. And douchy. Especially the Sam Mendes part. I mean seriously, what was I pretend thinking?)

I thought Rudolph was funny when she was on Saturday Night Live, but was often overshadowed by Amy Poehler and other female cast members. Prior to Away We Go, I wasn’t sure if Rudolph could carry a sitcom, never mind a feature film.

But with each passing scene, her character grew, then shrunk, then exploded. She seemed like an actual person, not just the hipster/ artist/ pregnant lady the movie portrayed her as.

In the first scene of the film, Rudolph and co-star John Krasinski are sharing an (ahem) intimate, oral moment where Krasinski’s character, Burt, is in the sheets and you know, well, okay I’ll stop there. But it’s about as tender a scene about oral scene can be, because Rudolph doesn’t overplay it.

Any way, you should go see the film, if for no other reason than Maya Rudolph. And she’s in almost every scene, so you get to see a good bit of her.

P.S.- Did anyone know Rudolph dates Paul Thomas Anderson? The thought of her manning an oil rig in Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” brings a smile to my face.

Super P.S.- Has Rudolph always been such a fox?

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Posted by Bradford Pearson at 2:00 AM