Best of 2009: No. 10, ‘Away We Go’

Sooner or later, I have to decide what my favorite films from 2009 were. So I thought it would be a good idea to compile the list, film by film, beginning at the end. So here goes.

My No. 10 film for 2009 is … “Away We Go.”

I doubt you’re going to see this quirky little film on many other critics’ lists. After all, the language the actors speak is English. The tone that director Sam Mendes affects is sweetly melodramatic. The two main stars come from television, Maya Rudolph (“Saturday Night Live”) and John Krasinski (the American version of “The Office”). And there are no, say again no, computer-generated special effects.

Even the story is a bit farfetched. Burt (Krasinski) and Verona (Rudolph) are a loving couple, lovingly unmarried but expecting a child. Still living in the kind of netherworld that many of us experienced in our mid-20s - no longer children yet still not quite adults - they want to find a place to live where they can raise their baby.

But their trip to find that perfect place becomes a process of finding themselves. They begin as innocents, living in a ramshackle house with cardboard on the windows (Verona moans that they “don’t even have this basic stuff figured out”). And after visiting their messed-up friends and relatives in such places as Madison, Phoenix, Montreal and Miami, they conclude that they may not be as unprepared as they fear.

The message of “Away We Go,” if that’s the right word, is that at some point you just have to decide to take the plunge into adulthood. As that great philosopher John Lennon said, life is what happens when you’re busy makng other plans. Burt and Verona know, instinctively, that things won’t be easy. But if they work hard at loving each other, and the baby they’re bringing into the world, they have a fighting chance at happiness.

Mendes gets the most out of his cast. Krasinski is a nerdy version of his “Office” character, a kind of vulnerably sweet guy who is capable of great love even as he is clueless about what the overall culture expects of a “real man” - whatever that is. Rudolph has so toned down her wild-and-crazy SNL character that she’s essentially unrecognizable, yet she never feels less than authentic in how she faces her fears.

Effective, too, are the secondary characters. From Allison Janney’s boorish mother to Maggie Gyllenhaal’s raging feminist, each gives our protagonists a lesson in how NOT to parent. Or live, for that matter.

Known more for his dramas, from the Oscar-winning “American Beauty” to “Revolutionary Road,” with “Jarhead” and “Road to Perdition” in between, director Mendes shows a unique ability to establish quirk without resorting to cute. Working from a screenplay written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, Mendes makes sure that his film, while an exaggeration, hits a basic truth about life that feels familiar to many of us to were dragged into adulthood - and ended up being the better for it.

No, “Away We Go” isn’t a major film. But it’s an important one, especially as we end the first decade of this new century. It is a must-see for the generations caught between those of us who came to age during the 1960s and their own iFutures. It is an antidote for all the easy escapism out there, much of which fulfills its own needs but much of which ends up being simple emotional appeals to the great god Onan.

Maybe Roger Ebert said it best: “Burt and Verona are two characters rarely seen in the movies: thirtysomething, educated, healthy, self-employed, gentle, thoughtful, whimsical, not neurotic and really truly in love. Their great concern is finding the best place and way to raise their child, who is a bun still in the oven. For every character like this I’ve seen in the last 12 months, I’ve seen 20, maybe 30, mass murderers.”

It’s life, people. Revel in it.

Below : The trailer for “Away We Go.”