Sam Mendes
Yahoo! Movies has the trailer for the next Sam Mendes film, Away We Go. It stars John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph as a couple expecting their first child and criss-crossing the country looking for a place to settle down and start a family. Co-stars include Maggie Gyllenhaal, Allison Janney, Chris Messina, Catherine O’Hara, Jeff Daniels, Jim Gaffigan and Cheryl Hines.
Right from the start, this doesn’t look anything like his previous films, American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead or Revolutionary Road. In fact, it looks like a wild conglomeration of other people’s styles, as if Alexander Payne decided to do a riff on current indie stylings. Speaking of which, I can’t begin to say how immediately put off I am whenever anything uses that indie hand-drawn aesthetic and the trailer’s use of it undoubtedly influenced my negative take on the film. Blech! I hate it when it surrounds musical acts and I hate it when it comes into film. I don’t exactly know why, but I suspect it’s because it has the aura of a forced affectation. Anyways, the trailer makes it look a lot like an Alexander Payne film but without the humor, which doesn’t do much to entice me.
Away We Go is being released by Focus Features on June 5th.
