Maybe it is that the couple seems so boringly banal despite their illusions of self-importance. They are in a quite vapid relationship despite the film’s efforts apparently bent on making them special while at the same time sort of an Everycouple. And Burt, played earnestly by John Krasinski and Verona, portrayed by Maya Rudolph, are not particularly attractive. She’s plain (maybe that’s the point). He’s scruffy and would fit right into some of today’s French films that like their young heroes unshaven. Of course, with a film like this, there will be folks with reactions opposite from mine and think they are seeing people with whom they can empathize. (No Supreme Court potential intended.)

Each part of the journey makes Burt and Verona want to look somewhere else, as well it should given what they encounter. In Phoenix Allison Janney plays an overwrought, grating former colleague of Verona, and her lifestyle is a turnoff. In a Wisconsin visit to the home of an old chum of Burt, they find Maggie Gyllenhaal as the ditsy Ellen, living a hippie-like existence in a domestic cocoon with a guy nuttier than she is--Josh Hamilton as Roderick. That sequence at least has some good humor that explodes in defiance of a philosophy that precludes using a stroller for fear it might be too confining for a child.