WANDERLUST

Great Anti Chemistry

title: WANDERLUST
year: 2012
cast: Paul Rudd, Jennifer Aniston
rating: ***1/2

How many things can weird, overly-openly-honest hippies do to make an average city-bred couple feel uncomfortable? About as many things as make the audience uncomfortable – and that’s not such a terrible thing if Judd Apatow’s producing. This has his signature over-the-top bodily function humor written, drawn and painted all over it. Story centers on Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston who, after both losing their jobs and driving to Rudd’s obnoxious money-loving brother's house, happen upon a bed and breakfast harboring the oddest lot of hippies you’ll ever experience. Going far beyond the clichés of pot smoking and naval-gazing, these freaks watch you go to the bathroom, exchange partners, and give birth right on the porch. The residents are too silly to be real, especially Justin Theroux as the picture-perfect bearded leader: a cross between Charles Manson and a game show host. But this is really about Rudd’s shocked reactions to the craziness around him. With an old-school vulnerable nice guy humor the likes of Richard Benjamin, Albert Brooks, and Alan Alda (who plays the commune’s dazed owner), Rudd has enough charm to rise above a somewhat (if not deliberately) banal script. And while Aniston is, once again, playing herself, she and Rudd make a good couple who happen into this gratuitous Twilight Zone episode that, while not being very funny, sure ain't boring.