Feces jokes can be amusing, frontal nudity can be funny and marijuana can be downright hilarious. But despite its recourse to these and all other forms of crude humor, the comedy of Wanderlust is consistently flaccid.
Forced by unemployment to abandon their beloved Manhattan, George (Paul Rudd) and Linda (Jennifer Aniston) stumble upon a bucolic commune called Elysium. After weighing whether to escape to the suburbs instead, they attempt to settle down in the spirit of peace and love.
As the television series “Portlandia” has recently proven, hippies (and hipsters, their latter-day descendants) provide ample material for satire. But while that show crafts fresh, razor-sharp barbs, Wanderlust is unoriginal and dull. It assumes that the mere mention of a stereotype – Pacifism! Veganism! Naturalism! – will be enough to generate a laugh. It bounces among clichés like a pinball, hitting each and bounding on to the next without grace or accuracy. It throws in a great deal of gross-out humor for good measure, but by the end it runs out of even these tired ideas and is reduced to spoofing YouTube videos, an ignominious fate for a subject of endless comedic potential.
A talented cast could potentially conceal the script’s overwhelming mediocrity. Thankfully, some of the supporting characters provide respite from the drudgery, such as Michaela Watkins as a miserable, drunken housewife or Justin Theroux as Seth, a deviously charming hippie.
But Rudd and Aniston’s abilities are restricted by ill-fitting roles. Rudd (as bland and mildly enjoyable as a sugar cookie) is unconvincing as a type-A businessman, and the high-energy Aniston seems out of place as an easygoing drifter. In fact, Aniston seems to be largely present in order to strip on cue. At one point, she decides the best way to halt the encroachment of capitalism is to protest topless. This unbalanced couple only further destabilizes the film.
Even with stale material and unconvincing characters, Wanderlust can be vaguely enjoyable. After all, there are plenty of psychedelic montages and attractive bodies at which to ogle. But the film is ultimately undone by its fraught politics. There is something fundamentally weird about a hippie movie in which women are fickle and irrational, men are stable breadwinners and those who experiment sexually must ultimately beg for forgiveness. Despite taking place in Georgia, the cast is almost uniformly white, and the only time we hear a Southern accent is when Rudd lets loose a string of extremely crude sexual jokes. What’s more, some of the most emphatic hippies turn out to be frauds. Instead of a playful tribute to an exuberant movement, Wanderlust feels like an attempt to debunk its free-spirited subjects.
–Britta Hanson
