The director here, Sam Mendes, has built a olid reputation on the strength of his Oscar-winning debut (namely, American Beauty). Stars John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph exude the kind of unaz ected charm that drives the best independent films. Screen writers (and acclaimed novelists) Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida bring a literary cachet seldom found in movies of any kind. So why is Away We Go so difficult to like? There’s a self-satisfied quality to this tale of a couple’s quest to find the perfect place to raise their baby-on-the-way, and it undermines all the participants’ best intentions — and keeps the movie from being fun or very funny. No complaints about the HD’s picture, though, which consistently does right by the film’s panoramic widescreen images. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is clean and solid, although the director’s use of indie pop songs evokes Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude perhaps a bit too specifi cally. The two brief documentaries are pretty standard for this kind of release. But in their commentary, Mendes, Eggers, and Vida manage to show all the humor and generosity of spirit not found in the film itself. Oh, well. If comedy were easy, everyone would do it. Download Away We Go full movie (DVD,DivX,iPod,PDA)
