Word: verona
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Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) are the ideal, bright, loving twosome. He has the playfulness of a Muppet; she is quieter, more solid, earth-rooted like a blossoming fruit tree. A couple since college, and now 33, they haven't run out of things to whisper to each other, secrets and aspirations to share. Their conversations are intimate, caring, leavened with sprung rhythms of cuddly wit. And now that Verona is six months pregnant with their first child, they've started to worry about their, and its, place in the world. (See TIME's Summer Arts Preview...
...what makes Burt and Verona as annoying as the smug yupsters in those New York Times commercials? It could be the movie they're in, a bloated, criminally judgmental borderline-comedy about Burt and Verona and the friends they are loftily superior to. Virtually every supporting character in Away We Go is either a repellent caricature deserving contempt or a crippled thing cadging for our sympathy. To director Sam Mendes, they're nothing but point-provers, put on display to show the deviant behavior our two winsome leads, or any sentient member of the audience, would instantly reject. (Watch TIME...
...Burt's parents, for instance: Jerry (Jeff Daniels) and Gloria (Catherine O'Hara). Burt and Verona have moved to be near them in the child's first years, but now they're moving abroad and renting their house to strangers, leaving the kids to find some other place to live. That sets Burt and Verona on a trip across the country, and into Canada, visiting cities where old friends might cue them to settle down. Some friends: shrills and quacks. Some country: this is an American road movie that hates most Americans. No surprise when you consider than, in American...
...Phoenix, they spend time with Lily (Allison Janney), Verona's former boss, and her husband Lowell (Jim Gaffigan). Paging the ugly Americans! Looped by noon, Lily brays in a glass-shattering voice about her kids, who are within their easy earshot, and wonders why she hasn't been accepted at the local country club. As for Lowell, he's been crushed by her tart hectoring into a mewling collection of prejudices. So Burt and Verona move on. After all, if Phoenix harbors two hateful people, the whole city must be tainted...
...Veronese, 10 years younger than Tintoretto, was in his teens when he arrived in Venice from Verona - hence the name - and quickly became the third point in a triangular test of wills. Unlike Tintoretto, who struggled to find his mature style, Veronese shot out of the box as a boy genius - but a shrewdly humble one. Let Tintoretto play the role of Titian's perennial antagonist. Veronese would be the admiring pupil. Titian returned the favor by promoting Veronese whenever he could, especially for commissions that Tintoretto might be after...