Okay, here’s the plot we’re dealing with in Wanderlust: a young married couple in their early 30s (ignore the fact that Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston are in their 40s) have reached a crossroads in their life. They feel like they should own their own condo, but prices in New York are so high that they can’t quite swing it. The problems start when, due to societal pressure to consume and conform, they try it out anyway. One dip in the economy later, they find themselves unable to pay their mortgage and essentially bankrupt. In such a situation, what else are the couple to do other than move in with Rudd’s obnoxious, racist, meathead, yuppy brother down in Georgia (look, in this movie this is the only option they have, just go with it)? Things seem like they’re going to go pretty bad until our protagonists happen upon a secluded hippy commune while on the road, then their life suddenly goes from being full of despair, to full of... hippy jokes.
And that’s pretty much the long and short of what this film is. Wanderlust isn’t worried about things like story and character as much as it is coming up with funny gags. The only reason we have any story whatsoever is so that we can have a believable excuse for why two squares would find themselves living in such a strange environment. And even to call the two main characters squares is kind of a stretch. They play the straight men in some scenes, but not others. Who they are as people seems to change on a dime depending on who they need to be to make the next gag work. The script, co-written by director David Wain and actor Ken Marino, is always in service to the jokes rather than the storytelling. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing; it just means that this movie has no chance of being great. The jokes here are all pretty funny, so Wanderlust ends up being a pleasant experience regardless. Say what you will about a stupid comedy that makes you laugh but doesn’t have any characters, it’s still way better than a movie that develops its characters well but consistently tries and fails at being funny. Nothing kills the mood like a bad joke, and once you’ve laid a few stinkers, there’s pretty much no winning your audience back, whatever else you’re able to accomplish.
The cast can easily be broken into two camps. There are the stars, Rudd and Aniston, who are serving as the box office draw, and then there’s the members of the defunct comedy troupe The State, who are the creative forces behind the film and the actors who make up many of the wacky side characters. Why not start the acting talk by first addressing the stars? I really liked Rudd here, but didn’t care so much for what Aniston had to offer. The difference is, while these are both fine enough actors with an appropriate amount of star presence, Rudd is funny and Aniston isn’t. Rudd has one particular scene, where he’s riffing in front of a mirror, trying to talk himself into committing an act of free love, that is an absolute show stopper. It’s still pretty early in the year, but watching this scene may go down as being the hardest I laugh in 2012; and all the scene consists of is Rudd just being the natural idiot that he is. He’s so affable and charming that even in the portions of this movie where he’s playing the killjoy to everyone else’s good time, you still find yourself coming down on his side.
Aniston has something inherent that makes you root for her as well, and she doesn’t ruin the comedic scenes she’s in or anything, but for the life of me I just can’t understand why she does so much comedic work. From her sitcom days to her extensive resume of rom-coms, this is an actress who keeps getting asked to do more than she’s capable of comedically. How much better would this movie have been if the wife role was played by someone with improvisational acting and comedy writing experience, like a Tina Fey? That was a rhetorical question, but I’ll answer it anyway. So much better. Aniston has had a successful enough career already, clearly, but I can’t help but think that she would be an even bigger star than she is if she would have stuck more to the romantic drama side of things when choosing roles. Just look at how much better she is in something like The Good Girl, where she’s playing melancholy, than she is in everything else that she’s done.
How about the State alumni? They’re funny down to a person. Probably the one with the biggest role is Joe Lo Truglio, who’s playing a nudist, wine making, prospective novelist. Even if a lot of the humor surrounding his character is just based off of seeing too much of his naked body, he’s still great in the role, and it was nice to see him get a spotlight. Over the last fifteen years or so he’s been one of the more underused members of The State. All of the scenes where he bores people by talking about his novel just killed me. The other guy to get a big spotlight is Marino, and he predictably nails it as the asshole brother. He’s doing something pretty similar to his obnoxious douchebag character from Party Down here, but with a bit more of a white, suburban flavor, and it’s all just hilarious. From his stupid shorts, to the ridiculous McMansion he lives in, to the Creed or whatever he listens to while he’s driving around in his Escalade; all the details of this character are pitch perfect.
As far as other State alumni go, Kerri Kenney-Silver shows up playing one of the weirder members of the hippy commune, and she rivals her work in Reno 911 when it comes to being creepy and asexual. Who her character is isn’t ever defined much more than “the sick looking blonde chick who says a bunch of weird stuff,” but when everything she’s saying is this funny, it’s hard to care. The three members of Stella, David Wain, Michael Ian Black, and Michael Showalter, also make a cameo as the crew of a lame morning news show, and while they only get a couple of minutes to shine, they make the most of it. These three have defined such distinct personalities when working together that pretty much all you have to do is let them bounce off of each other for a few minutes and you’re bound to get something offensive and hilarious without really having to set up who their characters are this time around.
There are a number of other cast members here that could be spoken of, and I could probably even make mention of how Wain is or isn’t developing as a director, but since Wanderlust is a movie that lives and dies so much by its jokes, I’ll just make a quick mention of some of the things that tickled my fancy and be done with it. Early on there’s a scene that riffs on the HBO process for developing original programming that I liked. As good as that network is, they really do overuse the crutch of making all of their shows have scandalous and provocative concepts, and it was refreshing to see somebody call them out. The Marino character’s house is a marvel in hilarious production design. There are useless flat screen TV’s shoved into every corner of the house, for no reason, and no mention is ever made of them, which I just love. There are some cameos and Easter eggs that end up being a lot of fun as well. At one point the hippies all join in on a singalong of my favorite Wings song, ‘Love Take Me Down to the Streets,’ which I really appreciated. And once Ray Liotta shows up, that’s when things get really serious. Wanderlust isn’t something that you should go out of your way to see, but one afternoon in the future you’re probably going to watch it streaming or on a disc or something, and it will more than likely make you laugh your ass off.
