Sam Mendes’s “Away We Go” (June 5), a sometimes raucous, sometimes melancholy road movie, concerns the obstacles a young couple who are expecting their first baby encounter in their search for a place to put down roots — preferably near friends — and raise a family. Although they aren’t planning to tie the knot (her decision), for fans of “Saturday Night Live” and “The Office” this is a marriage made in comedy heaven, with John Krasinski as the amiable Burt and Maya Rudolph as his bulging beloved, Verona.
Mr. Krasinski has been moving into films lately, most notably as the all-American football hero in George Clooney’s “Leatherheads,” but he remains best known as the most likable, least paranoid character on “The Office.” As for his co-star, in her seven-year stint on “Saturday Night Live,” Ms. Rudolph played practically everyone — some 72 characters, ranging from a space alien to Michelle Obama to a blues belter who delivers a hilariously cracked version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a sporting event (perhaps a winking shout-out to the mother she lost to cancer long ago, the R&B singer Minnie Riperton).
Until now it would be fair to call Mr. Krasinski the subtler comic actor, if only because some of Ms. Rudolph’s most memorable turns on “SNL” were such gut-busters. But in “Away We Go,” they are both subtle, working off each other like expert musicians who have been playing together for years. Her Verona is the more opaque; she’s quiet and, without seeming sour or depressed, doesn’t smile a lot. During a visit with Burt’s narcissistic parents, she’s polite but just reserved enough that we know she thinks they are awful. We come to feel the weight of their situation — her advancing pregnancy, their lack of a proper home — in her pensiveness.
It’s a fascinating performance, because, like her character, she doesn’t come to us: we have to read her. By contrast, Mr. Krasinski’s shaggy Burt is a warm enthusiast, hoping for the best. At one point, he explodes at some truly terrible people, and Mr. Krasinski shows us a man so angry it makes him inspired, but, true to his character, never mean.
Most of all, though, Mr. Krasinski and Ms. Rudolph show us how they mesh — he buoys her, she grounds him. The result is one of the most credible couples ever to grace a movie screen. In the few scenes where Burt and Verona are apart, we wait to see them together because that’s when they each seem most whole.
Da The New York Times, 3 Maggio 2009
