Rites of Delayed Passage

Instead of Teen Angst, Coming-of-Age Movies Increasingly Focus on Not-Grown-Up Grown-Ups

They are growing up. They are undergoing rites of passage, taking on responsibility, awkwardly developing. In the course of 120 minutes and a one large popcorn, we will watch them leave childhood, or at least start to, clumsily toddling along, making mistakes and taking missteps as adolescents must. They are tenderly, cinematically coming of age.

They are 34 years old.

Narratives of maturation have been a Hollywood standard since Scout befriended Boo Radley in 1962, since James Dean rebelled with cause in 1955, since Freddie Bartholomew became a Captain Courageous in 1937.

But the formative-themed films of recent years have added something. That something is 5 o'clock shadow. The characters doing the growing up are already grown-ups, at least biologically -- just waiting for an inciting event to take them the rest of the way. Our protagonists can be either funny ("Knocked Up") or melancholy ("Lars and the Real Girl"), so long as they are also listless, confused and soul-searching.

We mock them.

We are them.

Well, some of us are them. Some of us are their parents, wondering where we went so wrong.

In the end, what makes them most remarkable isn't the fact that they're struggling -- 20- and 30-somethings have been doing that for years -- but the fact that they're convinced that their confusion is unique. And our I'm-a-mess/you're-a-mess culture may have made them that way.

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"Away We Go," the newest film to fit this trudging-to-age description, opens here tomorrow. Starring John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph, it chronicles the adultification of Burt and Verona, goofy-haired (him) and vintage-clad (her) hipsters who accidentally get pregnant and then embark on a cross-country trip in search of a suitable place to raise the baby. Their current place, physically and mentally, is not suitable. Their wee house looks to be made of dust mites. They struggle with commitment issues (her) and directionlessness (him). They have jobs, but these jobs are more placeholders than vocations: he sells insurance, she illustrates medical textbooks, both do so ironically. Their broken bedroom window is repaired with cardboard.

The film was penned by first-time screenwriters Dave Eggers and his wife, Vendela Vida. Eggers is the writer best known for "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," a book about caring for his little brother after their parents both died of cancer. The 20-something characters in "Heartbreaking Work" were plunged into adulthood before they were prepared for it; in "Away We Go," the protagonists are a decade older but only marginally more settled.

"Are we [screw-ups]?" Verona asks Burt as they contemplate bringing a child into their trial-and-error lives. "We're 34, and we don't even have this stuff figured out."