WANDERLUST: 4 STAR
Wanderlust is something we haven’t seen for a while — a Jennifer Aniston movie that doesn’t stink. In fact, it’s really good. It has a great supporting cast, loads of laughs and a wild hallucination scene. The only thing that stinks in this flick is the hippie hygiene.
Aniston and Paul Rudd play George and Linda, a big-city couple forced to downsize when he loses his job and her documentary is rejected by HBO. Forced to sell their apartment and faced with the prospect of working with his idiot brother, the pair move into Elysium, a free love commune where “dreams are dispensed daily, just bring your own container,” and adopt a hippie lifestyle.
This is the funniest movie to hit theatres since “Bridesmaids” last year.
Aniston reminds us of why she is such a big star in this movie. Rudd is also charming and does a mirror pep talk scene that is raunchy, funny and kind of surreal. Speaking of surreal, the hallucination sequence is trippy and hilarious. I’ve seen loads of drug scenes in movies but this one made me feel high with laughter.
Aside from the funny script, the reason why this movie works is that each of the supporting characters could have been the focus of the story and it still would have been a good film. There isn’t a character here that feels extraneous. Justin Theroux as head hippie Seth has some of the movie’s best lines and it’s a treat to see Alan Alda on the big screen again.
I also loved the über hippie jokes. Where else would you find a placenta as soup stock joke?