There is something intrinsically sad about Sam Mendes’ (American Beauty) expecting-parent road trip flick Away We Go, about two thirty-somethings grappling with impending parenthood. Perhaps it is the cutesy vulgarity, funny in the theater but unsettlingly crude in retrospect. Perhaps it is the relentless satirical caricatures of parental types that cut to the core of something ridiculous about how we understand parenting, but leave the institution feeling rather cheap. Perhaps it is the fact that Burt Farlander (John Krasinski) and Verona De Tessant (Maya Rudolph), the expecting parental protagonists of the film, look like deer in headlights throughout, grasping for some ideal vision of parenthood they find doesn’t exist, only to settle their quest in the with a resolution that looks remarkably like another idealized dream of a life. The film makes a generation – my generation – look stuffed with visions of perfect life, fed on half-baked ideologies, and hopelessly, groundlessly lost.

Burt and Verona’s quest begins when they discover that Burt’s dorky, giggly middle-aged parents are moving to Belgium before Burt and Verona’s baby will be born. The young couple moved to Colorado to be near Burt’s parents. Cut loose from that connection and with jobs that can be pursued anywhere (Burt sells insurance futures and Verona is an illustrator), they set off to find the perfect place to start their family, beginning in Phoenix and then on to Tucson, Madison, Montreal, and Miami. Each location offers a friend or relative and a different take on parenting. The highlights are Verona’s absurd former boss Lily (Allison Janney), a foul-mouthed, neglectful and regretful parent in Phoenix, and LN (Maggie Gyllenhaal), Burt’s sister and an attachment parenting fanatic who lives with her skeavy hippie husband Roderick (Josh Hamilton).

Gyllenhaal’s take on the hippie “new-mom” garners the most laughs. She is first introduced tandem nursing her infant and eight year old, and she swears off strollers because she doesn’t like the idea of perpetually “pushing her children away.” She and Krasinski are the most consistent and enjoyable actors in a film bogged down by over performances. Maya Rudolph’s Verona is particularly hard to watch, with her fluttering eyes and relentless gapped mouth reactions.

But the problem here is that the film itself seems as wandering and unsure as its characters. It has a good eye for the misguided exaggerations of modern parenting, and in the Montreal segment almost gets a vision of a family that isn’t worthy of absolute ridicule. But in the end, when Burt and Verona forge out on their own, you get the sense they haven’t grown or transformed as characters (they are rather shallow throughout), but have merely found a home that suits their anxious indecision.

It is an unexpected rejuvenation, then, to sit through Eddie Murphy’s new comedy, Imagine That, an adorable fable about fatherhood with a simple message at its core: pay attention to your kids and love them. Murphy’s movie makes all of the floundering in Away We Go seem a little silly.

In Imagine That, Murphy plays a successful financial advisor, Evan, on the verge of a possible promotion to the head of his investment firm. Two things stand in his way: Whitefeather, a rival financial advisor and a hilarious spoof of a jibber-jabbing, smooth talking salesman played by Thomas Haden Church (Sideways, Spanglish), and Evan’s daughter Olivia (Yara Shahidi). Evan is separated from his wife. When Olivia is sent home from school because she is talking to her imaginary friends under a magic blanket and refusing to come back to class after recess, Evan is stuck taking her to his office because his wife is in the midst of pledge week at her non-profit.

Yara Shahidi and Eddie Murphy in Imagine That

Imagine That is a story of little girl whose parents are too busy for her. At Evan’s office, Olivia can’t stay out of trouble, drawing on his papers and telling Evan odd stories about her imaginary friends. Her games begin to unravel Evan, who has a break down during an important client meeting when he finds his notes scribbled with his daughter’s doodlings of kissing fish. The twist comes when Evan discovers that Olivia’s imaginary friends are actually channeling prophetic stock projections. Evan is suddenly very interested in his daughter, and rather than working on investment research into the wee hours of the morning, the father and daughter begin to play at home with her blanket and imaginary friends, gleaning the stock buys.

Murphy’s movie career has been hit and miss, but in Imagine That his rubbery face and exaggerated delivery still draw laughs. When Murphy can’t get his hands on his daughter’s blanket the night he is preparing a major stock report, his efforts to steal the blanket from a children’s sleepover party is fifteen minutes of quality kiddy comedy. There is a trend these days to make children’s films with jokes for the kids and jokes that fly over their heads and make their parents laugh. Murphy manages to make a film where kids and their parents can laugh at the same jokes. For a Nickelodeon production, it is a nice surprise to see parents and children on the same page.

Like Burt and Verona, Evan is on his own quest to discover how to be a parent. He gets their by learning how to be a kid again. It is an interesting contrast to Away We Go, where grown-ups who feel like kids are trying to learn how to be adults. Mendes’ film gets at a deep anxiety in Generation Y. But what Murphy shows is that Burt and Verona are neither childish adults nor overgrown children. They are adolescent Peter Pans too nervous about the idea of life to be able to lighten up and enjoy it.

Away We Go
Opens June 12
Angelika Film Center

Imagine That
Opens June 12
Wide Release