WANDERLUST

Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston play stressed out Manhattanites who ditch the Big Apple for suburban Atlanta which they promptly ditch for a hippie commune.  Are there hijinks?  The first thing they see when they arrive is a man carrying wineglasses, totally nude, wandering the woods at night.  So rest assured, there are plenty of hijinks.

It's hard to tell if this is a wild and unconventional comedy hampered by studio blandness, or a by-the-numbers studio project elevated by the involvement of comedy ringers, but either way it's probably not destined to become some cult classic.  There are a few too many lazy jokes.  Surprise nudity is, well, surprising the first time at happens, and possibly funny, but you can only turn to that old trick so many times.  And the end of the film recreates an ancient (in web years) viral video, so if you've been on the internet anytime in the last decade, you've already laughed at the sight of a woman tryng and failing to stomp grapes into wine.

The enthusiastic and talented cast keep this film from sinking whenever the jokes just aren't quite there.  Alan Alda plays the founder of the commune, who can't open his mouth without mentioning the ten other people that founded the place with him.  Justin Theroux is a sinister guru with his eyes on Aniston, his real life love interest.  When Paul Rudd slaps a fly on a picnic table, Kathryn Hahn screams at him "You have a fetish for violence!"  Every single thing Ken Marino says/does is so drenched in douche that it won't seem funny at first; the overkill-factor might takes a few jokes to grow on you, but you'll be laughing too hard to care once he's yelling things like "Stop making my infidelity all about you!" at his drunken, sobbing wife.

It helps that when the plot takes generic twists, nobody takes them too seriously.  There are betrayals, reconciliations, evil developers, hallucinogenic episodes, missing deeds, important political novels, grand theft auto, violent family squabbles, births, and car crashes, but those are just excuses for jokes.  It also helps that the movie isn't really judging anybody, so much as it is judging everybody; New Yorkers are self-deluded materialists who bicker over the difference between a 'micro-loft' and a 'studio apartment'.  Suburbanites are emotionally burnt out and repressed, staying far away from each other in their vast cookie cutter houses until the occasional screaming match brings them together for good old fashioned plate smashing and accusation flinging.  And of course the hippies are up to all sorts of hippie stuff.

~ The State Cameos:  Joe Lo Truglio, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, David Wain (also directed, co-wrote), and Ken Marino (co-wrote).

~ Jordan Peele can be seen on Comedy Central's Key & Peele.  His co-star in that show, Keegan Michael Key, makes a brief appearance as a sycophantic TV executive.

~ The closing credits have a few outtakes, and seem to indicate that the film was heavily improvised.