FeedAway We Go
June 27 2009, 4:15pm
This will likely be remembered primarily as Dave Eggers's screenwriting debut, and taken in the abstract, it's not a bad screenplay at the scene level. There's some good dialogue (and John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph seem to be having fun with it), and the character development via little details (Burt's periodic job-related phone calls, and the faux persona he uses during them, for instance) by-and-large works.
But the overall conceit -- two twentysomethings (or wait, thirtysomethings? I don't remember) whose jobs can be performed remotely from anywhere, and which pay enough for them to plan a multi-leg air-travel trip around the country, including adding a Montreal->Miami leg the day before, just so they can find someplace new to live & raise their baby -- is profoundly irritating.
Hilarity ensues, or is in any case supposed to ensue, when it's revealed that the only people they know in each of their destination cities are broad caricatures. It's a good thing they clearly love each other, because their ability to make & maintain friendships with normal people is clearly mega-stunted.
This does give carte blanche to a cross-section of my favorite character-actors (especially Alison Janney and Maggie Gyllenhal) to overplay their nutjob characters about as far out as they can, and they deliver, in a total goofball, tone-destroying kind of way that helps to deflate at least some of the navel-gazing pretension.
I've never watched The Office, so all I can really say about John Krasinski is that a film actor with shaggy hair, a full beard, and thick horn-rimmed glasses might as well be acting with a paper bag over his head. Poor guy. Maya Rudolph is awesome, of course, though director Sam Mendes has her spending a little too much of the film in "tight-faced, worried/stressed-looking" mode. Plus her fake pregnancy belly is the same fake-plastic-looking one that has been in every fake-pregnant movie for the past 25 years. WTF?
But the overall conceit -- two twentysomethings (or wait, thirtysomethings? I don't remember) whose jobs can be performed remotely from anywhere, and which pay enough for them to plan a multi-leg air-travel trip around the country, including adding a Montreal->Miami leg the day before, just so they can find someplace new to live & raise their baby -- is profoundly irritating.
Hilarity ensues, or is in any case supposed to ensue, when it's revealed that the only people they know in each of their destination cities are broad caricatures. It's a good thing they clearly love each other, because their ability to make & maintain friendships with normal people is clearly mega-stunted.
This does give carte blanche to a cross-section of my favorite character-actors (especially Alison Janney and Maggie Gyllenhal) to overplay their nutjob characters about as far out as they can, and they deliver, in a total goofball, tone-destroying kind of way that helps to deflate at least some of the navel-gazing pretension.
I've never watched The Office, so all I can really say about John Krasinski is that a film actor with shaggy hair, a full beard, and thick horn-rimmed glasses might as well be acting with a paper bag over his head. Poor guy. Maya Rudolph is awesome, of course, though director Sam Mendes has her spending a little too much of the film in "tight-faced, worried/stressed-looking" mode. Plus her fake pregnancy belly is the same fake-plastic-looking one that has been in every fake-pregnant movie for the past 25 years. WTF?
