I’ll admit it straight off the bat, I did not like this film in the least. Like anything Sam Mendes does, it is overblown, overrated and could have been done a whole lot better if someone else had the material.

As a general policy, I tend never to wish harm on a fellow human being, but I wonder in the time since 9/11, why the hell did this guy, who was booked on American Airlines Flight 77 (aka the plane that crashed into the Pentagon), get the good fortune to miss it by showing up too late to Dulles when three friends of mine who all worked in the Pentagon weren’t running late to work and died at their desks. Yes, I do hate the man and his work just that much.

The plot is this: An unmarried couple, who are expecting a child, travel around to places where their friends and family are in order to seek the perfect home for themselves and their unborn child. Not a bad plot, and it could have been a movie in the style of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. But it wasn’t, since I think Mr. Mendes totally wrecked it (see the above paragraph if you need any reminder of my opinion of him).

John Krasinski delivered a solidly respectable performance as the male protagonist Burt, Maya Rudolph was mediocre as Verona (I generally think she is a sub-par actress anyhow), and the cast of friends and family include: Catherine O’Hara and Jeff Daniels as Burt’s parents (kinda fruity); Carmen Ejogo as Verona’s sister Grace, Allison Janney and Jim Gaffigan as Verona’s alcoholic friends Lily and Lowell; Maggie Gyllenhall as his cousin Ellen (which she changed to LN) and Josh Hamilton as her husband Roderick (who play the two biggest fruits even I have ever seen, and I call California home); Chris Messina and Melanie Lynskey as Tom and Munch Garnett (the most normal and well-adjusted of any of the people Burt and Verona visit); and Paul Schneider as Burt’s brother Courtney.

I am not against this film because it depicts an unmarried couple having a child (I disapprove of that personally, but that isn’t germain), but it is so much the “message” movie, which normally sucks anyways. But given Sam Mendes’s touch, the directing turned what could have been good into overly banal s---.  So, save your time and sanity, and don’t see this movie.