Away We Go
Maya Rudolph, John Krasinski, Catherine O'Hara, Jeff Daniels, Maggie Gyllenhall, Melanie Lynski. Dir. Sam Mendes, Focus Features, 2009
I've been thinking about Lawrence Kasdan's 1991 domestic drama, Grand Canyon, all day. I have not seen the movie in at least a decade, nor am I especially jonesing to see it again. Grand Canyon featured a series of interconnected vignettes and characters in Los Angeles in 1990, each vignette a meditation on some aspect of coupling, dating, parenting, and generally loving in these modern times, tied together by Kasdan's attempt at a profound summation, that being: if we look at something huge and incredibly old we will more effectively shame ourselves into gratitude for being relatively affluent in Southern California in the late 20th century.
It...lacks something, right? Gravitas. Moral clarity. Thematic heft. Actual meaning.
I thought of the Kasdan picture because I watched Ron Howard's 1989 Parenthood today, followed by Sam Mendes' 2009 Away We Go, two bracketing pictures which struck me as each filmmaker's attempt at a Big Statement about Family & Shit just like Kasdan's movie, and as pictures which come up short in more or less the same way Kasdan did, using almost the exact same structure.
Away We Go, like the other two, features a series of vignettes, each a meditation on some aspect of parenting, family, and the nature and meaning of home, each featuring its own cast of "quirky characters," or animate ciphers delivering their point. Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski play Bert and Verona, an unmarried couple in their 30s who decide to travel the US, looking for the perfect place to start their family - Verona is six months' pregnant.
Allison Janney, Jim Gaffigan, Melanie Lynskey, Maggie Gyllenhall, Josh Hamilton, Chris Messina, Jeff Daniels, and Catherine O'Hara play said quirky characters, all effectively. Daniels and O'Hara play Krasinski's parents, self-involved Boomers who decide to follow their bliss to Belgium, for two years, 30 days before their grandchild is due. Gyllenhall and Hamilton play childhood friends of Krasinski's who have become GOOP-type helicopter parents, members of a movement which considers strollers a form of child abuse. They, along with Janney and Gaffigan and Lynskey and Messina, all turn in perfect performances, the first three couples responsible for my loudest laughs. Rudolph and Krasinski have great chemistry, Rudolph so strong I wished, as I do in all her films, that she worked twice as often.
Still, it all comes out to less than the sum of its parts, which was my feeling about Parenthood, too, and triggered my memories of Grand Canyon. Away We Go offers a great cast doing good work for a bigtime director, and it's... ok. If it set out to tell us something about ourselves in 2009, it didn't quite get that job done. If it set out to do other things, it didn't quite do them, either.
Parenthood
Steve Martin, Mary Steenburgen, Jason Robards, Dianne Wiest, Keanu Reeves, Rick Moranis. Dir. Ron Howard, Universal, 1989
See above review. Howard's big-cast, multiple-storyline series of vignettes offering meditations on various aspects of parenting, family, and home for these times - the late '80s - fares somewhat better by not reaching for quite as grand a conclusion as Kasdan and Mendes, but still never adds up to more than the sum of its parts. All of which are well-acted, charming, funny, with solid performances from everyone. I always enjoy seeing Keanu pre-Matrix, and Parenthood is even pre-Bill&Ted (though both date from '89.) Robards does a slow burn as the father of doomed gambling addict Tom Hulce, who plays oily and incorrigible like a less-seductive Amadeus.
This said, Parenthood, like most Ron Howard pictures, feels good without offering much substance to chew over on the way home from the multiplex. It's pleasant, professional, and it's pablum. Maybe a good holiday movie for families after the kiddies go to bed.
Martian Child
John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Joan Cusack, Oliver Platt, Anjelica Huston. Dir. Menno Meyjes, New Line, 2007
Cusack plays a successful science fiction author contacted to consider adopting an emotionally traumatized boy convinced he's from Mars. Sophie Okenedo, Amanda Peet, Joan Cusack, Oliver Platt, Richard Schiff, and Anjelica Huston all play opposing/supportive parties surrounding Cusack's relationship with Dennis (Bobby Coleman.) Cusack applies his self-aware earnestness to helping Dennis navigate questions of identity and abandonment, and Coleman's effective as a traumatized little boy who shows flashes of the funny, warm kid he wants to feel safe enough to be. The film, itself, teeters along a knife edge between sentiment and sincerity, falling off into sincerity in the final reel, just in time to save Martian Child from getting lost in overemotive space. A good, not great, movie for parents with special needs kids, maybe, though probably not for the kids.
King of California
Michael Douglas, Evan Rachel Wood. Dir. Mike Cahill, First Look Studios, 2007
Michael Douglas plays Charlie, a bipolar jazz musician and single father of Evan Rachel Wood's Miranda, a 16 year-old free range child who raises herself during the two years Douglas's Charlie spends in the hospital. When released, though supposedly recovered, Charlie quickly espouses the belief naked Chinese men swim ashore everyday and that a fortune in lost Spanish gold is buried beneath the local Costco.
The whole movie comes down to Miranda's attempt to love and know her dad as he leads them on his Quixotic quest and to her realization she loves him regardless of his eccentricity, maybe even FOR his eccentricity. Though Miranda's life pre-Douglas is a study in soul-numbing, Wood's performance comes off more as overmedicated than overloaded.
Fortunately, Michael Douglas is in top form, turning in the same kind of restrained-madness performance that made Curtis Hanson's Wonderboys such a treat. It would be easy to overplay a man hell-bent on breaking into a Big Box store to jackhammer his way through its floor in pursuit of lost Spanish gold, but Douglas doesn't. He's the best reason to try to find King of California. It's probably among his best roles.
With appropriately-scaled expectations, any of today's family movies works well enough to enjoy for what they are, rather than what they try to be. King of California, probably the most obscure title here, also deserves the most love, but the Howard and Mendes movies are easiest to see. Keep an eye out for King. It's worth finding.
Martian Child
John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Joan Cusack, Oliver Platt, Anjelica Huston. Dir. Menno Meyjes, New Line, 2007
Cusack plays a successful science fiction author contacted to consider adopting an emotionally traumatized boy convinced he's from Mars. Sophie Okenedo, Amanda Peet, Joan Cusack, Oliver Platt, Richard Schiff, and Anjelica Huston all play opposing/supportive parties surrounding Cusack's relationship with Dennis (Bobby Coleman.) Cusack applies his self-aware earnestness to helping Dennis navigate questions of identity and abandonment, and Coleman's effective as a traumatized little boy who shows flashes of the funny, warm kid he wants to feel safe enough to be. The film, itself, teeters along a knife edge between sentiment and sincerity, falling off into sincerity in the final reel, just in time to save Martian Child from getting lost in overemotive space. A good, not great, movie for parents with special needs kids, maybe, though probably not for the kids.
King of California
Michael Douglas, Evan Rachel Wood. Dir. Mike Cahill, First Look Studios, 2007
Michael Douglas plays Charlie, a bipolar jazz musician and single father of Evan Rachel Wood's Miranda, a 16 year-old free range child who raises herself during the two years Douglas's Charlie spends in the hospital. When released, though supposedly recovered, Charlie quickly espouses the belief naked Chinese men swim ashore everyday and that a fortune in lost Spanish gold is buried beneath the local Costco.
The whole movie comes down to Miranda's attempt to love and know her dad as he leads them on his Quixotic quest and to her realization she loves him regardless of his eccentricity, maybe even FOR his eccentricity. Though Miranda's life pre-Douglas is a study in soul-numbing, Wood's performance comes off more as overmedicated than overloaded.
Fortunately, Michael Douglas is in top form, turning in the same kind of restrained-madness performance that made Curtis Hanson's Wonderboys such a treat. It would be easy to overplay a man hell-bent on breaking into a Big Box store to jackhammer his way through its floor in pursuit of lost Spanish gold, but Douglas doesn't. He's the best reason to try to find King of California. It's probably among his best roles.
With appropriately-scaled expectations, any of today's family movies works well enough to enjoy for what they are, rather than what they try to be. King of California, probably the most obscure title here, also deserves the most love, but the Howard and Mendes movies are easiest to see. Keep an eye out for King. It's worth finding.
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