Is hippie-bashing actually fun? Do you get a kick out of it? How is it when you screw with Amish or Mormons, people say, “ooooooooohhh,” like there’s some taboo, but hippie stereotyping never crosses a line? Hey. Didja know? All hippies:
• Are drug addicts
• Have boundary issues, namely that they have none
• Are loyal only to ideas, not people
• Have anti-social quirks
• Are closeted capitalists
• Are fools deserving of our scorn
That makes films like Wanderlust hilarious. Woo!
The opening of this movie is actually fairly strong: George (Paul Rudd) and Linda (Jennifer Aniston) are big city kids. They bite the bullet on purchasing upwards of 600 (!) square feet of NYC condo and that very day their lives fall apart. Linda’s directorial work (a depressing documentary described as “An Inconvenient Truth meets March of the Penguins”) is humbled by HBO. The meeting ends with Linda suggesting that instead of the penguins being ripped to shreds, they become romantic vampires. HBO: “I can’t tell if this is sarcasm, but we’d be interested in that …” At the same time, George gets a wink-point from his boss suggesting a big move upwards. Moments later, the boss repeats the gesture while in handcuffs as the office is being commandeered by the law. George’s friend asks, “did you just get wink-point-shitcanned?” If Wanderlust had kept this focus, it would have made a very likable film.
It didn’t.
Forced out of civilization as they know it, George and Linda retreat to the South. After discovering George’s bother Rick (Ken Marino) is a Grade A douchebag, the couple flees to a hippie commune where we spend the rest of the movie. It is almost precisely at this point that I no longer enjoyed Wanderlust.
Is it just the hippie bashing? Do I sympathize too closely with the group? No. I didn’t really like any of them and wished George and Linda had sought fortune elsewhere. I didn’t like the hippie quirks; I didn’t like setting up head hippie Seth (Justin Theroux) as a rival to George. And call me unenlightened, but I just don’t find the humor in lack-of-privacy matters. Let a man talk to his wife or take a crap in peace for God’s sake. It just doesn’t strike me as funny. The capper to this experience is a scene cringe-worthy on the Bridesmaids scale – Paul Rudd tries to psych himself up for some free love and in doing so goes through what is best described as intense personal prolonged Tourette Syndrome in front of a mirror and then in front of the girl. It is worth note that a few pockets of people in the theater thought this was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. Personally, I find it easier to watch torture porn. No lie.
That overlong diarrhea-of-the-mouth scene is probably why this film was made. I can’t see any other reason. There is nudity, but only for humor purposes. How would you like that? “We want you nude on screen so people can laugh.” That doesn’t really make my top-10 list of all-time favorite suggestions, either. But hey, it’s cool; they’re just hippies. It’s not like they’re Amish or Mormons.
Rated R, 98 Minutes
D: David Wain
W: David Wain, Ken Marino
Genre: Let’s make fun of hippies
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: “Get a job, hippie!”
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: “Like, that’s not cool, man.”
