A film review by Craig J. Koban March 2, 2012 |
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WANDERLUST
Paul Rudd: George / Jennifer Aniston: Linda / Justin Theroux: Seth / Malin Akerman: Eva / Alan Alda: Carvin / Ken Marino: Rick
Directed by David Wain / Written by Wain and Ken Marino |
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WANDERLUST
certainly boasts all-star talent behind the camera and is most definitely
an edgy – if not a bit pedestrian at times - hard-R rated bit of
unconventional tomfoolery regarding a clash of big city suburbia versus
commune-living, free-spirited hippies (or, in their vernacular in the
film, “intentional community” dwellers).
Even though the laughs are sometimes grossly uneven at times, the
film proves that having a game and endowed cast of proven comic performers
can help override even the most glaring of faults. Rudd
– who also appeared in Wain’s ROLE MODELS – plays George and Aniston
plays Linda; they're a yuppie Manhattan couple who dare to partake in the American dream
of living the big life in the big city with every available modern
convenience at their disposal. They purchase a loft very small condo that, in their realtor’s industry
jargon, is amusingly referred to as a “micro-loft" (she’s played in a
brief and understatedly hysterical performance by Linda Lavin).
George and Linda can barely afford their oh-so-tiny dwelling, but
they purchase it anyway and move in, but before they have time to celebrate
they both hit career rock bottom: George is laid off from his job and
Linda’s new documentary about…ahem…penguins with testicular cancer
is not picked up by HBO due to its relentlessly preachy and depressing
content. Realizing
that they need a fresh start, George and Linda leave The Big Apple and
decide to head to Atlanta to temporarily live with George’s rich,
successful, and despicably arrogant brother (Ken Marino, whose very funny at playing very obnoxious
people; he also serves as co-writer here).
George takes a job working for his sibling, but when he can’t
stand it and his brother’s aggressively smug company any longer, he decides to depart with
his wife and head back to a small bed and breakfast styled commune that
they stumbled on to while initially on route to Atlanta called
“Elysium”. This
commune of hippie-love, non-violence, public nudity, natural food intake,
ample drug use, and all out spiritual harmony is ruled over by its alpha
male, so to speak, Seth (a gut-wrenchingly funny Justin Theroux) and its
original land owner, Carvin (an equally amusing Alan Alda).
Seth is suave, serenely charming, but creepily unnerving all at the
same time, mostly because he’s really a sleaze ball underneath his façade
as a soft-spoken leader that’s in touch with both his inner person and with
nature around him. He’s
also hopelessly out of touch with modern day advances in technology and
culture, and his preaching to George and Linda on the sins of
“Betamax” and “fax machines” earns the film some large laughs.
As George and Linda begin to acclimatize themselves to their new
commune lifestyle, George slowly begins to despise it whereas Linda has conversely adopted it with a zealot-like
passion.
Rudd
is such an assured on-screen funnyman when it comes to dry deadpan
delivery and wily sarcasm that he’s a perfect fit for George, the stiff,
urbanized, upper class wannabe that slowly begins to mentally unravel as his
wife succumbs to the commune’s intoxicating “Kool-Aid.”
The film also wisely understands how to precisely harness his
unique gifts at uproarious improv: There’s a subplot in the film where
one of the commune dwellers (a never-been-sexier Malin Akerman)
matter-of-factly expresses a desire for George to have sex with her
(remember, everything is shared here). When he finally bolsters up the courage – and gains permission
from Linda – to have a one-night tryst with this golden-haired goddess,
George proceeds to go to a bathroom mirror to psyche himself up and
practice his dirty talking foreplay skills.
It takes a special type of improvisational genius like Rudd to
utilize multiple dirty words describing male and female genitalia to the hilariously pornographic extremes that he does in this scene; it’s a
rare case where foul language is used as the joke and is funny because of
how it’s stated. Rudd
is also funny as the film’s straight man of sorts to all of the
commune’s peculiar sights, like a public nudist that happens to be the
commune’s winemaker and resident author; a woman that miraculously
manages to endure an unassisted birth and then keeps the placenta in a
bowl still attached to her baby a day later; and simply witnessing his wife
fully embrace the commune’s didgeridoo-playing, acid-taking, and
sexually liberated lifestyle (Aniston is eagerly willing to make herself
look foolish when the script calls for it).
Other members of the cast are a hoot as well, like the
aforementioned Theroux, whose unpredictable edginess and staunch advocate
of his commune’s existence here acts as a nice foil to Rudd’s
increasingly befuddled non-believer.
Kathryn Hahn is also engaging as a merrily unhinged dweller that is
rancorously suspicious of any outsiders.
Alan Alda - whom with WANDERLUST and his entertaining turn in last
year’s TOWER HEIST – seems to be
making a bid for a modest film career comeback.
His Carvin is a kind, but batty old coot that believes that money
can’t buy anything (no…literally…”it can’t buy anything” as he
pathetically tries to tell George at one point). Even
though WANDERLUST successfully builds on a fairly steady tempo of solid
chuckles throughout, there is no denying that the film is slavish to its
own hippie-commune clichés, all of which we have seen countless times
before. We get the obligatory jokes about commune drug use,
cheerfully consequence-free sex with multiple partners, obsessed vegans,
and perhaps far, far too many sight gags revolving around male frontal
nudity (funny initially, yes, but when piled up throughout the film it
loses its comic luster). The
film’s attempts at social satire are kind of limp-wristed and
half-cocked as well and definitely could have benefited from a more
cheekily subversive edge. The film’s ending is kind of overly saccharine and
annoyingly tidy, which sort of undermines the rest of the script's raunchy
mischievousness. Yet, I laughed enough in WANDERLUST, despites its blunders, to give it a somewhat half-hearted, but nonetheless approving recommendation. And putting Rudd in front of a mirror and letting him loose with scatological three-point zingers with nothing but net generates ample comic mileage every single time. |
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