3.5 stars out of 5
The basic premise of Wanderlust is that we’re all stupid: city people, suburban people, off-the-grid types. If you can get behind this philosophy—and were also a fan of The State—I think you’ll find this to be a very, very funny movie.
It turns out to be one of the stronger movies from The State crew (including a very funny newscast sequence with the State members not in the main cast here), working with their extended Children’s Hospital family, and a dash of Apatow. Paul Rudd is reliably Ruddian as put-upon likable everyman [insert whatever his character’s name is this time]. Jennifer Aniston seems better suited to this goofy role than much of the cinematic dreck she often associates with. Alan Alda is amusing as a wacked-out elder statesman, and Linda Lavin gets some laughs as a Manhattan realtor.
Rudd and Aniston flee the city in what initially feels like a rip from Albert Brooks’ Lost in America. And I got a little hung up wondering what they did with their mortgage in what’s explained as an impossible real-estate market. But the jokes come fast and furious and I was laughing too hard to worry about little inconsistencies, as the couple heads first to the Atlanta suburbs, and then to a hippy-dippy commune. Rudd has an extended sequence talking to a mirror that had me in tears.
Some of the jokes have a very “sketch comedy” feel rather than coming naturally from a realistic situation. That was fine with me—it’s comedy. In fact, when the movie tries to get a little more plot-driven/true-to-life, that’s where it starts to falter. (The Apatow factor?) The last 20 minutes or so felt a lot more standard issue: How will the lovable hippies get the land back? How will Rudd and Aniston patch up their differences? But the laughs that precede this make Wanderlust definitely worth checking out.
Jack Silbert, curator