I can’t decide if I like Dave Eggers, or not. I love McSweeney’s Internet Tendency (well, sometimes), and I mostly love The Believer, but I do not generally like the stories published in the McSweeney’s Quarterly, nor am I interested in the books printed under the McSweeney’s imprint. At the same time, I appreciate the whole McSweeney’s publishing philosophy, and the ground they have broken for small presses and internet publishing. As to Eggers’ work itself, I have not read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, but have heard enough about it to have a predisposition to dislike it. I feel most people whose tastes I share and whose opinions I admire do not care for Eggers’ books.
As to Vindela Vida, I read Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, and I both liked it and didn’t. I thought it was original and well-written, and I loved the frigid, remote Lapland setting – both because it was descriptive of an area I’d never read anything about, and because it worked perfectly for the book’s subject matter. On the other hand, I disliked the protagonist. I couldn’t at all get a sense of who she was, and I felt she wasn’t honest or open. It’s weird to read a book written in the first person, wherein the protagonist’s attitude is ‘Sigh, I really don’t want to talk about this, but since you ask.’ Particularly, because I usually don’t feel this is an authorial choice; rather, it’s a persona a lot of cool young people my age have adopted, which I find extremely alienating in person, and which is now reflected in many of the characters dreamt up by the same people who currently freeze you if you try to talk to them at Brooklyn parties. I find people intimidating enough; I don’t need to be snubbed by my books. I started reading in the first place because I found characters far more relatable than people, but with the McSweeney’s crew, I often feel the books themselves are judging me.
Which brings me to Away We Go (directed by Sam Mendes, and co-written by Eggers and Vida). Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) are pregnant. Currently, they live in a shack of a house in Colorado, where they moved to be close to Burt’s parents. When they announce their pregnancy, however, Burt’s parents reveal that they are moving to Belgium. Thus, Burt and Verona are confronted with the whitest problem ever made into a two-hour movie: where in America would be best for two young people whose jobs are of a nature to enable them to make a living pretty much anywhere, and who have no limiting ties or hindrances, to settle down and raise a family? And so, the young couple hits the road, to visit old friends and audition cities.
The acting is far and away the best part of this movie. Rudolph and Krasinski are adorable, and every last supporting character does a fantastic job of portraying characters that are cartoonish but recognizable (particularly Allison Janney, as a braying, heavy drinking, inappropriate Mom, and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a drippingly condescending, New Age Earth mother). Everybody is a real sport about committing to dialogue that is frequently clunky or cliched. And – glory, glory, fabulousness! – the women all get to play interesting and hilarious character roles (albeit, as part of a never-ending parade of despicable or pathetically failed mothers).
The writing, on the other hand, ranges from ignorable to grating. There are twee details a-plenty (Verona and her sister climb into a model bathtub in a furniture showroom to cuddle each other and cry about their dead mom) and tortuously written monologues that go on and on, sounding like nothing anyone would ever say (an absolutely astoundingly stupid lecture involving pancake-syrup-as-metaphor-for-ties-that-bind, and Verona’s story of her family’s fruit tree, which made me feel like I was back in a ‘How to score that callback!’ monologue workshop).
But the biggest problem in Away We Go is that it has no problem at all…and doesn’t realize it. The movie would have been fine as a straight up smart comedy, but Eggers and Vida have twisted what is essentially a nothing dilemma (which city do we pick to have our baby in?) into an agonizing journey. But where’s the agony? Particularly because, in the end (SPOILER ALERT), the couple realizes they can simply live in Verona’s (deceased) parents’ gorgeous old mansion on lakefront property, which they already own!
We should all have such problems.
