BURT (John Krasinski) is 33. Verona (Maya Rudolph) is 34. They suffer — or make us suffer — Severe Whimsy Disorder. Symptoms may include excruciatingly playful dialogue and underemployment. Treat with megadoses of Nick Drake.
Their story unfolds, or rather puts its feet up and pops a PBR, in a script by Dave Eggers and his novelist wife, Vendela Vida. Eggers, author of the memoir “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” (or, “How I Nearly Converted Immense Personal Tragedy Into a Starring Gig on ‘The Real World’ “), was orphaned as a young adult. To misquote Wilde, losing both parents can mean making a fortune.
Thin though “Away We Go” is, three sort-of story lines involve losing parents (one set dies, another moves away, a mom disappears). I can’t say what it means to suffer orphanhood at a tender age, but in artistic terms it grants Eggers a license to cling to an uncompleted childhood, indefinitely. In one scene, someone makes important calls while bouncing on a trampoline at midnight.
What do Burt and Verona want? A family. Rejected by his parents and hers (who died inconveniently), Burt and the pregnant Verona wander the country like the lost doggies of “The Incredible Journey” trying to find people exactly like them so they can nestle down.
Leave aside the unlikeliness of a six-months pregnant woman and her guy traveling thousands of miles to visit various near strangers to decide whether they want to move in next door.
Forget that such committed alterna-kids would be unlikely to utter the words “Phoenix” or “Tucson” without shuddering, much less associate with foul- and loud-mouthed broads (such as a Phoenix mom, played by Allison Janney, on loan from “Juno,” who refers to her breasts as “jugs” that used to be nice until her kids “sucked ’em dry”).
Leave aside the way an earth mother (Maggie Gyllenhaal, who wafts Stevie Nicks-ishly through the heath, breastfeeding her school-age kids and disavowing strollers because they mean pushing her children away) is so broadly done that Jerry Lewis would have said, “Can we tone it down a little?”
Leave aside the childish wishing scenario in which Burt and Verona are simply handed everything they want without earning it in any way.
All of this I’d forgive — if I liked the main characters.
They’re occasionally endearing, but they live their lives between quotation marks (you never know whether Burt means anything he says) and don’t actually have affirmative personalities.
Lots of things freak them out (cool people, we are told, hate the word “superb” in one scene, “robust” in another), but when it comes time for them to prove how superb and robust they are, they dwindle. B. and V. sit, side by side at the exact center of the frame, as if waiting for Wes Anderson to come film them.
Director Sam Mendes (“American Beauty”) fails to make them as beautifully fragile as he wants to. It isn’t till the closing moments that Burt and Verona connect beyond the level of remarks about raising a “Huck Finn-y” kid.
The strange thing about the movie is its idea that such couples are rare flowers. But you can scarcely take a step in Seattle or San Francisco or Los Feliz without meeting them in hordes. If every Burt and Verona departed Brooklyn, the place would be so empty you could convert it into cropland, or maybe parking lots, for Manhattanites. Either way: an improvement.
AWAY WE GO
Juno II: The Middle-Age Years.
Running time: 97 minutes. Rated R (profanity, sexual references) At the Lincoln Square and Union Square.