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Glib and charming in roughly equal measure, the road-tripping "Away We Go" is worth seeing for Maya Rudolph, best known for being underutilized on "Saturday Night Live."

Her performance as a pregnant medical illustrator living in Colorado with an insurance salesman (John Krasinski of "The Office") reminds you just how interesting an eternal supporting player can be, given the opportunity.

The script uses its central couple as both observers and participants in a loosely constructed series of vignettes, the early ones built for caricature, the later ones for pathos.

The script comes from Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, who are married in real life.

Their screen couple exists in an arch comic realm of nearly superhuman niceness. Verona (Rudolph) and Burt (Krasinski) are introduced in bed, in a very funny opening scene that finds a new way to deliver age-old plot information. A few months into the pregnancy, the couple figures life is settled for the near-term. They'll stay in their little corner of Colorado, not far from Burt's parents (Catherine O'Hara and Jeff Daniels).

Then, out of the blue, the parents announce they're moving to Belgium. Now what? Where is home, exactly, if most of your friends and all of your family live elsewhere?

Visiting a variety of casual friends and relatives, Verona and Burt bounce from Phoenix to Tucson to Madison to Montreal, with late detours to the southeastern corner of the country. Montreal looks like heaven compared with the blowhards littering the lower 48, though their old college pals in Montreal have known their share of heartbreak.

 

Director Sam Mendes smooths out any sign of tension between Verona and Burt while letting his supporting cast get away with murder -- often enjoyable murder, but murder nonetheless.

In the Phoenix scenes Allison Janney, as Verona's blowsy former employer, swings for the fences and mugs like a fiend.

In Madison, playing a drowsily sensual university professor, Maggie Gyllenhaal brings a vaguely sinister quality to a woman who's breast-feeding her kids far beyond the usual cutoff point, and whose parenting philosophy does not allow for the use of strollers.

Some of this is funny; all of it is designed to stoke fear and doubt in the hearts of our deadpan sweethearts.

Mendes tends to shoot movies like a dispassionate anthropologist, examining bizarre modes of behavior from an emotional distance.

I've admired much of his film work, but from the beginning, with "American Beauty," he's never been one to defuse the smugness in a smug script. (So far, not one of his movies has come close to his achievements as a stage director.)

I enjoyed much of the dialogue in "Away We Go," but in their pursuit of happiness, Verona and Burt remain attractive outlines. And do we really need quite so much of singer/songwriter Alexi Murdoch's sensitive murmurings on the soundtrack?

Watch what Rudolph does, however.

Krasinski gets a fair share of laughs in "Away We Go," but when required to register a couple of emotions at once, you can sense him trying to figure out precisely how to do it.

With his co-star, you never feel the strain or calculation. She's funny too. Rudolph's touch is very sure. Even when limited by her material, she fills in the details, often wordlessly, and gives us someone worth caring about.

 

 

"Away We Go" Movie Trailer

 

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Away We Go MPAA rating: R (for language and some sexual content).

Running time: 1:37.

Starring: Maya Rudolph (Verona); John Krasinski (Burt); Ellison Janney (Lily); Jeff Daniels (Jerry); Catherine O'Hara (Gloria); Maggie Gyllenhaal (LN); Chris Messina (Tom); Melanie Lynskey (Munch).

Directed by Sam Mendes; written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida; produced by Edward Saxon, Marc Turtletaub and Peter Saraf. A Focus Features release.

 

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