Director Sam Mendes travels the sunnier side of Revolutionary Road, travels it, together with a playful, lovey-dovey, loosey-goosey couple expecting their first child and looking for a spot to put down roots, to Phoenix, to Tucson, to Madison, to Montreal, to Miami, evoking little sense of place anywhere outside of the lived-in house they left behind. This unmarried couple — a blackly bespectacled John Krasinski, bespectacled even in bed, even under the covers in the act of cunnilingus, and a bronze-skinned Maya Rudolph, a shade warmly and expansively photographed — escape the suburban bourgeois stereotype of Revolutionary Road, or any recognizable stereotype for that matter (“Are we fuck-ups?”), although all along the way they run into assorted models of parents who do not escape stereotype: the true itinerary of this plainly signposted road movie. (Bump. Falling Rock. Wrong Way. Dead End. Keep Right.) The folky pop songs on the soundtrack perhaps seek to hem them in, but the best thing about them, and the film as a whole, remains their individuality (he wants to marry, she won’t; she’s of mixed race and no parents; he’s got a breast fixation; etc., etc.), an individuality not best expressed in their looks of supercilious amusement and bemusement in the face of all those bad parental stereotypes. The upshot, even so, is a show of courage and optimism, just not a very convincing show. With Maggie Gyllenhaal, Allison Janney, Jeff Daniels, Catherine O’Hara, Paul Schneider. (2009) — Duncan Shepherd