Practicing Virtue, and Proud of It

Are we screw-ups? Verona wonders aloud. (I’m paraphrasing.) She and her boyfriend, Burt, expecting their first child, live in a ramshackle, poorly heated house and drive a boxy old Volvo. They are maybe a little scruffy, but they seem, objectively, to be doing all right, with jobs that don’t require them to go to work and a relationship that looks tender and durable.

Verona’s question may or may not be disingenuous, but the answer provided by “Away We Go,” the slack little road comedy in which it arises, is unambiguous. Far from being screw-ups, Verona and Burt, played with passive-aggressive winsomeness by Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski, are manifestly superior to everyone else in the movie and, by implication, the world.

And even though they express themselves with a measure of diffidence, it’s clear that they are acutely, at times painfully, aware of their special status as uniquely sensitive, caring, smart and cool beings on a planet full of cretins and failures.

The smug self-regard of this movie, directed by Sam Mendes from a script by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, takes a while to register, partly because Ms. Rudolph and Mr. Krasinski are appealing and unaffected performers and partly because the writing has some humor and charm. The opening scene, which finds the couple in bed, is disarmingly sweet and candid in its depiction of the sexual rapport of longtime lovers. There is real intimacy and affection between them, which is wonderful until, before too long, it becomes as insufferable as the songs by Alexi Murdoch, which similarly wear out their rueful, faux-naïve welcome.

The episodic narrative of “Away We Go” is spun from a thin, cute premise. The parents-to-be need to find a suitable place to raise their daughter, and their search gives them an opportunity to visit friends and relatives and to collect the nuggets of grievance and disappointment that fuel their search for perfect happiness.

Burt’s parents (Catherine O’Hara and Jeff Daniels) are a pair of giggly ninnies who have decided to decamp for Belgium, and their dinner table display of selfishness kicks off a transcontinental parade of bad child-rearing. A visit to Lily (Allison Janney), a former boss of Verona’s who lives in Phoenix, reveals a tableau of vulgar suburban dysfunction: fat, sullen kids; wildly inappropriate language; daytime drinking; and free-floating political paranoia (courtesy of Lily’s husband, played by Jim Gaffigan).