Movie: Away We Go.

Being in a relationship is like being in your car. No one else knows what it's like to be in that particular space, and when you're on the road amongst hundreds of other drivers, you know your car is unique in some way. It's the center of the universe, if you will. Just like no one knows what it's like to be in your particular relationship, with the other half that makes you a couple, and the feelings can never really be explained--they're just meant to be felt.
I wasn't compelled to see this movie when it first came out, mainly because of the contradictory reviews. It's depressing; it's a stoner movie; Sam Mendes is amazing; Sam drops the ball. Regardless, I'm glad I saw it so my mind could be made up.
It's one of the very few films that makes you forget the two actors acting like a couple, who probably met just two months before filming, are not really a couple in real life. Especially not John Krasinski and Maya Roudolph. She's too wise for someone like John, who's a joker.
John plays Burt. Maya plays Verona. They're not married. Verona is six months pregnant with a girl. One day they're comfortably in love, the next, one or the other needs reassurance that one isn't going to wake up the next morning feeling differently. Burt is very much committed to Verona. He proposes almost every day, even casually repeating himself at dinner with friends: "Verona, you are the love of my life." "Thanks, babe." "Will you marry me?" "Nope." They smile. It's not personal that Verona won't marry Burt. It's not him, who says he can't wait to see her as a mother, and hopes the baby has her smile. It's Verona.
Burt and Verona decide, three months before the baby's arrival, to leave their home due to Burt's parents absence. They're moving to Europe (the bastards). Burt and Verona feel desperate for familiarity and structure for their baby, so they go searching for a new home, one with friends and neighbors to help their new lives. They drive hundreds of miles in their little orange car visiting old friends with kids and Verona's younger sister, all exaggerations of textbook examples of the various families that differ in the world.
First stop is a near-neglectful family. The wife (Alison Janney) talks loudly about obscene subjects in front of her two chubby kids, claiming they don't hear her. It's "jibberish" to them, even screaming about her young daughter's dykish ways and her son's trophy-handle ears. The husband is just as dumb and passive as his kids.
Then is Verona's younger sister, who is single and curious to know what Verona remembers about their deceased parents.
After that, Maggie Gyllenhaal gets the hippie mom spot-on, banishing strollers from the house, claiming, "I LOVE my babies. Why would I want to push them away from me?!" when two minutes ago, Burt bought her an expensive stroller. She tells him to put it on the porch. Outside. Almost in tears due to quiet frustration.
And then is the Montreal family. Lovely parents. Five adopted children, all different ages and ethnicities. Verona loves this family most. In an amateur strip club, the father tells Burt about his wife's four miscarriages, and one a few days before, while his wife sways and twirls unhappily on a stripper pole. She's not in lingerie, just average clothes, as if she's done it a hundred times.
Towards the end, Burt learns his brother's wife has left he and his daughter down in Miami. And thus comes a fantastical scene, a screenwriter's wet dream, of Burt and Verona alone on a trampoline at night. Just talking about what they've seen and how it's affected them. Burt proposes again, in the midst of a tantrum directed at his betraying sister-in-law. And Verona says, "No one loves each other like us," and she tells Burt what to do and what not to do with their daughter and he listens like non of the previous husbands did. They're the best example.