One of the first people visited is Lily (Allison Janney), an old co-worker of Verona's who now lives in Phoenix and turns out to be a loud and overbearing lush who never misses an opportunity to be as obnoxious as possible.
Moving to a different city (Madison, Wis.) and a different socioeconomic group, Burt and Verona meet up with Burt's childhood friend Ellen (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a university faculty member who now refers to herself as LN.
Along with her partner Roderick (Josh Hamilton), LN is yet another paragon of pathetic idiocy with a collection of childbearing theories that are both bizarre and deeply held. Case in point is her belief in the efficacy of the three S's: no separation, no sugar, no strollers. You have no idea.
Clearly, Lily, LN and their ilk are to some extent supposed to be comic relief, but they do not play that way. These portraits are more contemptuous than comic, filled with enough meanness and mockery, deserved or not, to make laughter the furthest thing from your mind.
To be fair to "Away We Go," Burt and Verona do have some nicer visits with more appealing folks, but by then the damage has been done. The warmth and goodwill the film's protagonists generate on their own is never matched by anything else put on screen, and that does feel like a shame.
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kenneth.turan@latimes.com
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'Away We Go'
MPAA rating: R rating for language and some sexual content
Running time: 1 hour,
38 minutes
Playing: At the Arclight in Hollywood and the Landmark in West Los Angeles
