Latest screening: Away We Go

Sam Mendes' latest is a change in size, scope and style for the filmmaker but not a wholly successful one. You can see his thinking here. After the detailed, complex characters, settings and worlds of Road To Perdition, Jarhead and Revolutionary Road he would get back to a smaller, easier world - a contemporary story of two thirtysomethings trying to find their place in the world. Smaller than any film Mendes has done, including American Beauty, it is his "indie" film after the large scale studio films he's been making in the past decade.

Unfortunately it feels as if his approach was "let's make an indie film". It is as if he watched a whole series of recent, successful and/or popular independent American movies (like Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, About Schmidt, Sideways, Me & You & Everyone We Know, etc) and made notes. He took from these films that he needed slightly offbeat central characters, lost in a giant world but making their way; he needed a supporting cast if infinitely quirkier characters to make our offbeat leads seem more normal and closer to ourselves, while providing outrageous comedy; preferably he needed a road trip! You get the sense a wrote a list if US indie film plot points (cliches?) and ticked them all off as he went along.

The film is not wholly unsuccessful. The central characters, played by Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski, and indeed charming and largely likeable. Any scene with the two of them alone together works, and this, naturally, helps a great deal. Many of the supporting actors are also good, whether their characters work or not. Jeff Daniels and Catherine O'Hara are great as Krasinski's self-absorbed parents; Chris Messina and Melanie Lynskey are solid as the most normal and believable of the couple's old friends/acquaintances met along the way; Maggie Gyllenhaal truly inhabits her character, even if the character does the film a disservice.

The Gyllenhaal character, a new age mum who believes you shouldn't put a child in a stroller because of the negative energy given off by the act of pushing them away, and various such mildly humourous clap-trap, is a typical US indie film cliche of a character. She's never believeable as a character because you know she exists solely for the comedic possibility of mocking her extreme views. It does lead to the film's funniest scene, involving the stroller liberation of Gyllenhaal's boy, ut is it worth it. Not least because Krasinski's character may be appalled by her views but in taking the action he does he seeks not to protect himself and his family from these views and rebuff them he actively attempts to sabotage the relationship (however kooky it seems) between his supposed best friend and her child. It may be funny but it doesn't fit his character. It might have fit Rudolph's but as Gyllenhaal is Krasinski's friend the moment is given to him. Funny in the moment, but on reflection it hurts the film - and it all stems for the original decision to make Gyllanhaal's character to extreme and unbelievable.

And Gyllanhaal isn't the only one. Allison Janney is awfully contrived here. I love Janney. I loved her in The West Wing, but i already loved her in a plethora of pre-West Wing roles such as the English teacher in 10 Things I Hate About You. Her over-the-top character here is very very similar to that of 10 Things but whereas in 10 Things it fit in the Shakespearean world of extreme action it just doesn't feel organic here.

Away We Go is not without its laughs and certainly the central characters journey is enjoyable enough to follow them on, but you never become invested, you never really care!

Ultimately this is a xerox of so many other films that as with all copies the quality lessens. A solidly average, Sunday afternoon type of film but not one worth prioritising over so many other, more worthy films this awards season.