Movie Box Review

The new WANDERLUST demonstrates the strengths and limitations of amiability in movies.  Its stars, Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd, have made very profitable careers out of being professionally likable.  Unlike, say, Tom Hanks, who also began his career in light comedy but proved himself a very serious and varied talent, in the nearly 2 decades since Aniston and Rudd emerged with Friends and Clueless, it's hard to find a single title in their credits that's genuinely dark or even emotionally complicated (Aniston came closest with The Good Girl in 2002).  Their work is--with some exceptions--fairly reliably successful, but looked at in the aggregate, there's a bland professionalism to both their filmographies.

In Wanderlust, they play a New York couple who think they're about to hit new financial peaks:  Linda (Aniston) is pitching a new documentary to HBO, while George (Rudd) is in line for a big promotion.  Of course, they instead find themselves suddenly facing ruin, and have to leave their "micro-loft" in Manhattan and try something else.  Initially they head for Atlanta, where George will force himself to take a job with the porta-potty company owned by his obnoxious, nouveau riche brother Rick (Ken Marino, also co-writer of the script).  But when they rediscover just how awful Rick and his wife Marissa (Michaela Watkins) are, George and Linda remember their brief, idyllic pit-stop at a commune called Elysium, and decide to try the simple life.

This first section of Wanderlust isn't bad:  the script by director David Wain and Marino--longtime writing partners with pictures like Wet Hot American Summer and Role Models to their credit--has some satiric bite (Linda's epically terrible HBO pitch is particularly funny), and there are plenty of laughs as George and Linda seem to be on their own road to hell.  Once the story arrives (and stays) at Elysium, though, it all gets very tired.  Free love!  Naked penises!  Hallucinogenics!  Natural food!  Back in the 1960s, there was a spate of terrible comedies about how silly hippies were, movies like Skidoo and The Happening, and while Wanderlust is far superior to those bombs, it's not in a very different genre.   George and Linda will be shocked and charmed by the quaint spirits who surround them (the group includes Alan Alda, Kathryn Hahn, Joe Lo Truglio and Lauren Ambrose).  Then they'll be tempted by the possibility of opening their marriage (the main threats to fidelity are supplied by Malin Akerman and Justin Theroux).  They'll both go a little overboard (originally, in the version of the film shown to early audiences, Linda's devotion to Elysium's environmental cause included a protest that featured Aniston's first on-screen nude scene in all its mammary glory, but that's been digitally covered up and and editorially removed, reportedly because of Aniston's concerns about real-life boyfriend Theroux's feelings.)  Eventually, though, the couple realizes that this life just isn't for them, and they'll have to find a saner alternative.

Predictability in comedy isn't a fatal flaw (if it were, rom-coms as a genre wouldn't exist), but Wanderlust only intermittently has anything distinctive to add to its cliches.  And Aniston and Rudd, while certainly pleasant company, have such similar appeal that they're like the Witness Protection versions of themselves, unable to draw anything out of each other besides seemingly endless reserves of good-natured likability.  (I can't believe I'm writing this, but Aniston had more comic chemistry with Adam Sandler in last year's Just Go With It.)

Wanderlust is painless, and when it turns up on an airplane or cable network, you won't suffer while watching it.  But if you get interrupted halfway through and never catch the rest, you won't feel like you're missing anything, either.  Increasingly, the movies Aniston and Rudd make feel like that old line about buses:  miss one, and another just like it will be along soon enough.

OUR IDIOT BROTHER - Watch It At Home:  Sitcom On A Big Screen

Although it premiered at Sundance, OUR IDIOT BROTHER was an "independent film" only in a technical sense:  it was produced on a relatively low budget and didn't have US distribution in place.  (Harvey Weinstein picked it up at the Festival.)  Its sensibility is firmly mainstream, and certainly its cast--Paul Rudd, Zooey Deschanel, Elizabeth Banks, Rashida Jones--could have and frequently do star in major studio productions.  It's easily the mildest and friendliest of the summer's R-rated comedies.  (If you're in NY or LA and want to see a true independent film this weekend, seek out Vera Farmiga's remarkable directing debut Higher Ground, which will be opening in very limited release.)

In a different era, you'd call Ned (Rudd), the hero of Brother, a holy idiot.  These days, he's a stoner.  Ned lives with his girlfriend (Kathryn Hahn) and his dog Willie Nelson in upstate NY, farming organically and selling a little weed.  As you know from the TV spots, Ned is such a nice guy that when a local cop (in uniform) says he's having a tough week and could use a few joints, Ned sells them to him--and goes to jail.  Once free, he's turned away by his girlfriend (that's OK, but she also keeps his dog), and Ned's family has no choice but to reluctantly take him in. 

Ned's sisters are schematically as Type A and cynical as Ned is dozy and trusting.  Miranda (Banks) is a junior Vanity Fair writer who's so busy scheming to get ahead that she doesn't notice the love interest (Adam Scott) under her nose; Liz (Emily Mortimer) is obsessed with keeping her children letter-perfect and blind to the blatant affair her documentarian husband (Steve Coogan) is having; Natalie (Deschanel) acts self-destructively instead of committing to her true love (Rashida Jones).  The women pass Ned from one to the next, which conveniently allows him to cheerfully and negligently mess up all their lives, mostly just by being himself--but of course when he's done, they all wind up happier and more fulfilled than they'd been before. 

There's never much doubt where Our Idiot Brother is going, but getting there is a loose, enjoyable ride.  (In Sundance, the movie had an oddly curt last minute that didn't quite send people out with the smiles they were led to expect, and Harvey Weinstein has remedied that.)  The movie has a genuinely sweet sensibility (the film itself is a family affair, directed by Jesse Peretz and well-written by his own sister Evgenia Peretz and her husband David Schisgall), and even the most obnoxious character--that would probably be Coogan's--is allowed to score some laughs.  Everyone in the cast is great company; no one particularly stretches or showcases new skills, but they interact with assurance and what seems to be great affection for one another.  As director, Peretz makes a solid recovery from The Ex, which could never reconcile its sitcom tone with a plot that needed to be darker.  Here Peretz commits completely to positivity, and the result is buoyant.

Our Idiot Brother is by far the most pleasant movie of the weekend, and sight unseen, one is willing to wager that it's a better time than the low-rent action movie (Colombiana) and horror thriller (Don't Be Afraid of the Dark) that are its wide-release competition.  On the other hand, would you feel awful if you waited a few months and got it from your Netflix queue?  A Ned-like amiable shrug is the appropriate response:  Whatever you feel, man.