“Wanderlust” is the kind of screwball comedy that used to make censors froth at the mouth and demand boycotts. It is loaded with illegal drugs, casual sex, and nudity—lots of full frontal nudity. But based on the accompanied minors in the audience, many parents consider this R-rated comedy a perfectly acceptable family film.
Like a cluster of Saturday Night Live-style sketches drenched in patchouli oil, the story revolves around a couple named Linda and George (Jennifer Anniston and Paul Rudd), who lose their jobs and “tiny but expensive” New York apartment and head south to live with the in-laws. After a funny montage showing the drive, the exhausted couple stops at a B&B called Elysium. Entering a wooded driveway, they encounter a wine-sipping nudist (Joe Lo Truglio) and manage to turn their car upside down while hurriedly backing away.
Taken to a comfortable room by Kathy (Kerri Kenney-Silver) who asks George if he brought John, Paul, and Ringo with him, the couple learn that the B&B is also an alternative lifestyle enclave. Awakened at 3:00 AM by the unfamiliar sound of didgeridoos, Linda kicks George out of bed to find out what’s up. When he doesn’t return, she discovers that her now royally toasted husband has quickly become part of the guitar and woodwind groove-fest downstairs.
Once their car is turned upright, Linda and George finally make it to the sprawling Atlanta home owned by George’s insufferable brother (Ken Marino), and Home-Shopping-Network addicted sister-in-law (Michaela Watkins), who delights in repeatedly filling Linda’s glass to the brim from her just-purchased frozen margarita maker. George discovers that his brother’s “construction business” means supplying porta-potties to work sites, and that his brother is a horrible boss.
The couple decides to return to Elysium for a “two-week” trial period where Linda becomes more and more convinced that the laid-back lifestyle is perfect for her. However, the reality of living in a place where even the bathroom doesn’t have a door, a nudist keeps thrusting both his navel and his novel at you and the “truth circle” becomes a bash-your-partner tell-all, George has major doubts. His interest is aroused, however, when the Scandinavian blonde Eva (Malin Ackerman) invites him to make love. When Linda learns about the invitation, George asks her to consider accepting the free love maxim. To George’s surprise, Linda agrees and quickly takes the commune’s guru Seth (Justin Theroux) to bed. “I just did intercourse with your wife,” Seth tells George as he passes by in the hallway, and insecurity, anger, disbelief, and verbal diarrhea roil through George’s mind.
Admittedly, this film seems set in a time warp where flower-power is a new idea, and AIDS hasn’t been discovered. Seth keeps reminding us of this through constant references to being enslaved by modern devices like car phones and fax machines. The intentional community’s founder, Carvin (Alan Alda) wheels around on a motorized wheelchair reminiscing about his co-founders “back in ’71,” while the milk-goats, white horse, tepees, tie-dye, lack of bras and garishly painted bus just make things more surreal. But the biggest flash back, is literally a flashback where camera tricks from the 1970’s attempt to show the “groovy” hallucinogenic effects of drinking ayahuasca tea by jiggling the camera while using colored filters, kaleidoscope effects and facial close-ups of woozy-looking actors. Lost is the opportunity to see the others through George’s sober eyes—since he is the only one who didn’t drink the tea.
SPOILER ALERT: Essentially, this film is a fairy tale where everyone lives “happily ever after,” but this happiness is also based on fantasy. As shown in the film’s coda, the nudist winemaker’s novel becomes a huge bestseller after Linda and George launch a boutique publishing house. Reality is, the broke couple don’t have enough money to provide royalties, or enough authors to get a distributor or a big enough “platform” to make the book top the charts. Sorry to burst any nudist (or non-nudist) author’s bubble, but that’s just how it is.
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