BEFORE: Continuing with a theme of pregnancy meeting indecision - and I link through "Monsters vs. Aliens", with voices by both Seth Rogen and John Krasinski.
THE PLOT: A couple who is expecting their first child travel around the U.S. in order to find a perfect place to start their family. Along the way, they have misadventures and find fresh connections with an assortment of relatives and old friends.
AFTER: Again I have to sort of recuse myself, because I've never traveled around the country or really had to make a decision about where to settle down. Does that make me lucky, or lazy?
In this film, pregnancy forces a couple to re-think their lives, wondering if they're screw-ups, trying to do what's right - heck, trying to figure out what's "right", given the set of circumstances at the moment. And they both have jobs that can be done over the phone (Do they ever mention her profession? I must have missed it.) so in a way they have a luxury, they can live anywhere - most people probably have to just go where their job takes them, right?
So they visit a wide variety of crazy characters, some of whom are bad parents, so in a way they see a whole variety of roads they don't want to take, but I was never sure if that was leading them to determine the road that they DID want to take. It would be quite easy to write off the film as "pointless" as a result, but I think that's a little too easy.
After "Knocked Up", it's nice to see a couple whose togetherness is not in doubt - they're definitely in it for the long haul, however that is not the end of their problems (typical Hollywood fashion) but in fact is the start of a whole new set.
Meanwhile the film puts a different spin on a whole range of things, from strollers to breast-feeding, insurance, mock arguments, blended families, coping with loss of one's parents. And I'm glad that they pointed out that a pregnant woman shouldn't be traveling in an airplane, neatly avoiding my nitpick point.
Also starring Maya Rudolph (last seen in "A Prairie Home Companion"), Allison Janney (last seen in "The Ice Storm"), Jeff Daniels (last seen in "Dumb & Dumber"), Catherine O'Hara, Maggie Gyllenhaal (last seen in "Crazy Heart"), Jim Gaffigan (last seen in "The Slammin' Salmon").
RATING: 5 out of 10 space heaters
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