Paul Rudd works in an unspecified business in Manhattan. His wife, Jennifer Aniston, is making hard-hitting documentaries about penguins dying in the Antarctic that she’s trying to sell to HBO. They buy a “micro-loft” (which is real estate code for a single room about 10×10. Then their life falls to pieces (Rudd’s office gets busted by the FBI…but apparently a major federal crime takedown doesn’t affect him at all), they head to Georgia to live with Rudd’s brother, the seriously over-the-top Ken Marino, and they discover a commune in the Georgia countryside with an assortment of wacky characters.
And when I say “assortment,” I do mean “one of each.” Like there was a checklist.
We saw Wanderlust last night and I remember so little of the movie this morning I’m only writing this to remind myself I saw it. The movie is 98 minutes (feels slighter) of “wacky” stereotypes about 1)Manhattan, 2)hippies, 3)Ken Marino. Manhattanites pick their uber-expensive lofts by location of their favorite coffee joint! Vegans secretly long to eat meat! If you let loose for a while, you’ll find yourself…but not too loose! Because that will cause problems in your most serious relationship!
The whole movie was so thin. I think it was an excuse for a bunch of friends to get together and have someone pay them while they do stupid shtick.
It probably didn’t help that Jennifer Aniston does nothing for me. She’s so bland and uninteresting on-screen. She has no chemistry with Paul Rudd (their characters are supposed to be…married? really?) and she has no chemistry with her off-screen boyfriend Justin Theroux.
This movie also has the most full-frontal nudity (male and female) I’ve seen in a while. In this day and age of the Internet and anything you do on camera lives forever, so why did they do this?
Actually, there’s a lot about this movie that makes me feel like it was probably written at least ten years ago. There are long bits with an Atlanta news station. (Spoiler alert) Rudd and Aniston find happiness by becoming small-press publishers in Brooklyn. Except for Paul Rudd’s iPhone and a GPS unit, there’s no technology that didn’t exist at least ten years ago.
Feel free to pass on this one.