Away We Go

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🎙️ EPISODE 300: 01.24.2021 *Review starts @ ~ 08:48 This is a pretty horrible movie. It almost got the rare score of ZERO from your boy (me). The critical consensus that this is a good or at least OK film (68% at RT) is troubling. I digress. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a loathsome, hippie-dippy professor at a Midwestern university who is married to an equally new-aged maggot with long hair and a seahorse obsession. She hates strollers, still breast-feeds her 5yo, and is genuinely amusing in the role. The whole 15-minute interlude feels like a bad Ben Stiller movie, but it is by far the most entertaining sequence in the film. And then there’s the ending. Oh god, this fucking ending. The fucking ending is what we need to discuss, and the ending begins in a storeroom bathtub sometime in the middle of the film. Because who doesn't just chill out in storeroom bathtubs in real life? What, are you not 'quirky' enough to appreciate something like that?

Anyway, to back up, Jim from The Office and Maya Rudolph from SNL play a couple who have jobs where they don’t have to go to work. Cool jobs! They complain about being super poor but somehow have the money to spend weeks flying and taking trains all over the country (as well as Canada). They are traveling, you see, because Jim has knocked this lady up and they need to find a place to live because the windows in their house are actually cardboard and because Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara, who are Jim’s parents, are moving to Belgium or some shit (and won’t be available to babysit [?]–this part is unclear). In Tucson, Arizona, Maya Rudolph gets into a tub with her sister in the middle of a crowded tub store (because they are tub shopping [?]–this part is also unclear). Anyway, her sister decides that this bathtub is the perfect place to discuss why they never talk about their dead parents, and then she randomly drops a massive, insanely obvious foreshadow: "Hey girl," she says. "We still need to figure out what to do with THAT UNUSED HOUSE WE OWN." In a movie where the only thing resembling a plot is these two pricks finding a place to live, I wonder if that nugget will come up again? SPOILER: It does!

Of course, it isn’t mentioned again until the very end, when–after traveling for what feels like years–they indeed decide that, because of their being so poor, and also because fake fruit might still be tied to a tree by the driveway (there is no way I will be able to adequately describe the “fake fruit monologue”), a house they already own is probably the best place to raise their child. Oh yeah, did I mention that the house is a freaking MANSION ON A 500-ACRE PLOT OVERLOOKING THE WATER. The movie ends with our two main characters looking glum on the steps of their new MANSION ON A 500-ACRE PLOT OVERLOOKING THE WATER. The sky is overcast but there appears to be a cool breeze gently rolling in off the water. The dunes undulate. And Jim asks Pam Maya Rudolph, “Are we gonna be OK?”

To which she responds, “I fucking hope so.”

People do things in this movie that make no fucking sense. Like that bit of profanity there at the very end: where did that come from? It just didn’t feel right. (Their friend's need to pole dance to The Velvet Underground’s “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’” in a Canadian strip club because she just had her 5th miscarriage is also one that comes to mind.) At best, the eccentric characters they meet along the way are kooky representations of humans that might actually exist. At worst, they're brutally lazy stereotypes of myriad middle and upper class white folk, all of whom are put there to highlight just how great our loving couple truly is by comparison.

And do I need to explain why they’re not so great, these two crazy lovebirds? The co-screenwriter of this film, Dave Eggers once wrote a book that had a very long name, and it received a lot of praise. I’ve read it and it's good. The book, the sort-of-memoir that Dave Eggers wrote, deals in large part with the loss of both his parents, a factoid which not-so-subtly sneaks in here in the form of Maya Rudolph’s details. My parents are alive. Do I know how many years it takes to open up about that kind of pain, to be able to talk about your dead parents and their tendency to hang fake fruit on trees with your terrific, long-term boyfriend for the first time ever? Nope. No I don’t.

BUT… if I had to guess, I’d say two. Two years maybe? I’d say it would take two years for you to open up to the love of your life and talk about these things. But what the fuck do I know. And if it at anytime you became pregnant (and also virtually homeless) then I would figure it would take significantly less time to suck it up and suggest your vacant mansion as a possible home. Like, how about: immediately. There’s a housing crisis for shit’s sake.

I am drained. I am out of gas writing this review, and it doesn’t feel good. Do you get it? Can you maybe see where I’m coming from? I posit, given the talent involved, that the critics failed to look past the excellently designed movie poster and impressive IMDB page. And since they watched this film in between a day filled with Saw XXVII and Dance Movie 5, their expectations blinded the reality. Forget my issues with the ending and the fake fruit and whatever else, this entire movie is fucked. From start to finish, just fucked. The music (minus the Velvet Underground) is a kill-yourself drag performed by 3rd rate Jack Johnson impostors. The acting is horrendous. And director Sam Mendes probably deserves the most crap since he might be the most talented person involved here.

In a way, it’s reassuring. That such gifted people can fail so colossally: I think it's good when this happens. I just wish more people would realize it.

*** part of THE BIG EPISODE 300 EXTRAVAGANZA wherein I reviewed 36 movies, mostly live reads of critiques I wrote between 2009-2012. The finished product above is a highly edited version of the truly embarrassing one that was read during the five-hour podcast recording. I guess this is growing up. ***

THE 36 MOVIES REVIEWED DURING EPISODE 300

30 MINUTES OR LESS • ALEX BAG: UNTITLED FALL '95 • AWAY WE GO • BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD • BEING ELMO • BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM • THE BROTHERS SOLOMON • A BUCKET OF BLOOD •
THE CAMPAIGN • THE CENTER OF THE WORLD • CHRISTMAS ON MARS • THE CHRISTMAS TREE • CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE. • (500) DAYS OF SUMMER • A FIELD IN ENGLAND • FUNNY PEOPLE • GET HIM TO THE GREEK • GIGANTIC (A TALE OF TWO JOHNS) • INCEPTION • JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME • LEAVE NO TRACE • MAN ON WIRE • MIDNIGHT IN PARIS • MONEYBALL • MOON • MUTUAL APPRECIATION • POM WONDERFUL PRESENTS: THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD • RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES • SLEEPWALK WITH ME • SOME DRINKING IMPLIED • TIM AND ERIC'S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE • TRANSIT • TO ROME WITH LOVE • THE WICKER MAN • WINTER'S BONE • YOUTH IN REVOLT

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 300A - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 300C ⫸

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