When American Beauty dropped in 1999 to wave of critical praise and an intimidating stack of awards, it appeared that the world had found a new filmmaker in Sam Mendes who would take comedy seriously. Though it sounds like an oxymoron, we need more directors like that. So many comedies are merely collections of jokes slapped together with a flat point-and-shoot aesthetic. But in American Beauty, we got a grand, lush film shot with gloss and style. It was a wonderful satire of suburban malaise and I couldn’t wait to see what comedy Mendes would dream up next.

Unfortunately, Sam Mendes had grander ambitious for himself. With years of award-winning theater work behind him before he ever called “action” on a film, Mendes was interested in more than a single genre. So he went off and made a gangster movie Road To Perdition, a war movie Jarhead, and another suburban nightmare Revolutionary Road, while somewhere also marrying Kate Winslet and getting Nichole Kidman to appear nude on stage along the way (lucky bastard). The movies were all well produced and well thought out works of cinema, but none of them had the spark or life of American Beauty.

Well, fortunately Mendes has finally returned to the genre that tickles the funny bone. He’s made Away We Go a sweet and subtle little comedy about the anxiety of starting a family. Make no mistake, this is a movie with far smaller ambitions than American Beauty and doesn’t have nearly as much to say. But it does have a sense of fun and energy lacking in Mendes’ most somber work. Welcome back, buddy.

Away We Go stars The Office straight man John Krasinski and SNL vet/Paul Thomas Anderson wife Maya Rudolf as a young couple with a youngin’ on the way. They’re people who’ve clearly spent their 20s wandering around from job-to-job and never particularly worrying about the future. But now with a baby set to pop, they’ve suddenly become concerned about responsibility for the first time. The couple live near Krasinski’s parents (played by a perfectly cast Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara) hoping they’ll help with the early stages of raising the child, but are shocked to learn that the parents have suddenly decided to go on the impromptu trip to Europe just months before the birth of their grandchild. Confused, the couple embark on a road trip to try and find a new city to start their family.