Review - Wanderlust

Grade: C-

Yin: Faux-clever rehash of yuppie out of water narrative. Rudd and Aniston do little more than play toothless versions of their trademark character types while Director David Waid squanders a bit of the good will he earned with Role Models.

Yang: A few well-earned chuckles from Joe Lo Truglio, Alan Alda, and Ken Marino aren’t enough to turn the tide.

In-Between: Grape smashing in the nude. ‘Nuff said.

It used to be a thing to make fun of yuppies, didn’t it?

At least it was until most of them went broke.

I suppose enough time has passed and since 2008 and 2009’s crippling economic crises that it’s okay to get back to plucking at those overeager paper-chasers because that is the bread and butter of 90% of the jokes in David Waid’s occasionally funny but mostly painful Wanderlust.

Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd star as George and Linda, a New York couple enamored with a high-speed Manhattan lifestyle they can barely afford. When they’re forced to sell their brand new “micro-loft” after Linda fails to sell a half-baked documentary on penguins to HBO and George loses his job in light of an FBI raid at his stock brokerage, the pair heads south to Atlanta, where George’s cartoonishly obnoxious brother (Ken Marino) is offering work and a room in his McMansion. Along the way, the pair stop at the writers-think-it’s-cleverly-named Elysium Bed and Breakfast. For one night, George and Linda are privy to a pure Woodstock experience—complete with weed and didgeridoos--when the encounter the calculatedly wacky residents of the “intentional community”—never a commune—that houses Elysium.

From spacy nudist Wayne (Joe Lo Troglio) to foul-mouthed former porn star Karen (Kathryn Hahn) to expecting Earth momma Almond (Lauren Ambrose), the denizens of Elysium never fail to fulfill old school hippie stereotypes, but none moreso than fellow New York escape and free love child Eva (Malin Akerman) and de facto leader Seth (Justin Theroux). Seth, in particular, challenges George and Linda to leave behind the rat race and embrace nature’s bosom. After a straw-breaks-the-camel’s-back moment with George’s brother, the two take a shot at living like 21st century hippies, but is that life really all it’s cracked up to be?

Aniston and Rudd do the best they can with the mostly limp material. While Rudd delivers another toothless variation on his trademark snarky smart-ass, Aniston continues to elevate herself above Kate Hudson and Katherine Heigl as queen shrew--how she managed to do that with a character who is supposed to be an aimless free spirit is a bit of a mystery. Theroux gives a heroic effort as the extra smarmy and self-righteous Seth, but like Rudd and Aniston’s, he is saddled with a trite character with a fairly telegraphed arc. Alan Alda--as the aging founder of the Elysium commune--Joe Lo Truglio, and Ken Marino, on the other hand, deliver some consistent humor with their off-kilter characters that contributes to a few of the flick’s more chuckle-worthy moments. The rest of the cast, unfortunately, fades into the background, barely able to do more than exist as hopelessly dated cartoons.

Director David Waid, who first collaborated with Rudd on the far superior Role Models, probably viewed Wanderlust as some sort of insightful commentary on Americans incessant desire live beyond their means, clearly ignoring the economic developments of the past four years, and the toll it takes on their ability to enjoy life. Despite Waid’s subpar effort, Wanderlust is probably not the best vehicle for such introspection. The fact that the humor is too broad and sparse to be considered anything other than remotely clever doesn’t help matters either. With a serious overall to the half-baked cliché of a premise and at least a pound of nuance, Wanderlust might have captured the zeitgeist of the moment to make a relatively profound statement on “keeping up with the jones” when the jones’ are broke. Instead, he settles for limp rehash of the yuppies out of water narrative that barely inspires more than a few errant chuckles.

Movie Review - Watchmen

Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore’s seminal graphic novel Watchmen is a peculiar piece of art. It is visually stunning, filled with iconic images of the unbelievable framed as perfectly as any comic splash page, but as a narrative it is discordant, sluggish, and pretentious. Of course, those very qualities could describe the novel itself. I read Watchmen for the first time about three years ago after twenty-two years of wondering what was behind that blood splattered smiley face. I was nowhere near as impressed as the most ardent comic fans. I understood its brilliance, (it was one of a handful of titles in the ‘80s that brought the tried and true conventions of the superhero genre crashing down.) but that didn’t make me enjoy it any more. I never liked or even remotely cared for the characters. And, while I understood the insane genius of the antagonist’s plot, I always thought there had to be a simpler plan. With that in mind, I did not buy into the hype for Watchmen. I knew exactly what this movie would be: a love letter to the fans and a confusing mess to anybody who wasn’t invested in the original property. After sitting through this nearly three hour behemoth, I found out just how right I was.

Set in an alternate 1985 where Nixon is campaigning for his fifth term and the Cold War is about to go nuclear, Watchmen tells the story of the end of “superheroics.” It follows a group of a “superheroes”–debatable considering only one actually has powers–as they unravel the mystery of a hero killer and discover a devilish plot that threatens the world with total annihilation. Our “heroes” in this piece include the increasingly apathetic and god-like Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), aging, impotent Dan Dreiberg, known ominously as Batman analogue Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson), frustrated yet sultry scuba-suit-wearing superheroine Sally Jupiter, The Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), vicious absolutist vigilante Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), psychopathic superspy The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), and, the comic book version of Alexander the Great, Adrian Veidt, or Ozymandias to his legions (Matthew Goode). Through a jarring narrative structure, we learn about the disturbing faults behind these “heroes,” ranging from fetishism to sadomasochism to nihilism to total apathy for humanity, Snyder mimics the novel’s structure by interweaving flashbacks that traces the history of the group from their predecessors to the outlawing of masked heroes to the present (1985) where nuclear war between the US and USSR is imminent.

With Watchmen, Snyder uses a deft combination of CGI and staging to faithfully recreate the visual aesthetic of Watchmen illustrator Dave Gibbons original artwork. He also meticulously mimics and compresses Moore’s complex narrative structure. What Snyder failed to do was use these elements to craft a story or characters that movie audiences would actually cared about. Yes, technical proficiency and adaptation faithfulness count for something, but if a director fails to engage their audience then for all intents and purposes they have failed. In all fairness, the blame is not solely Snyder’s to bear. The obtuse source material, a collection of shoddy performances, the limits of the film runtime, and the modern audience’s understanding of superhero films all had a hand in crippling the Watchmen.

The difficulty in adapting Watchmen lies in the relative investment of its audience. Moore’s graphic novel is revered because it was targeted at readers who were invested in the concepts and philosophies of superhero comics. Snyder’s Watchmen struggles to connect with audiences that enjoy superhero movies, but, once they leave the theater, still believe that comics are kids stuff. Furthermore, Watchmen pushes superhero conventions so far into adult thematic territory that it becomes uncomfortable and laughable to modern audiences. Take for instance, the scene where Nite Owl and Silk Spectre make love in a flying Owl-mobile after they’ve saved citizens from a burning building, with Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” as the score. Looking over the audience, I noticed some patrons were squirming while others were ready to explode in laughter. It was just as ridiculous as it sounds. And that’s the problem. The concepts that were so powerful in Moore’s novel appear simply insane on film. With superheroes barely taken seriously by mainstream audiences, this film does not help the case by putting people in silly costumes in preposterous situations.

Adding to the ridiculousness of the story were wooden performances,–the most notable being Akerman’s stiff, ineffectual Sally Jupiter–bad makeup,–see Carla Gugino as the aging elder Jupiter and senior citizen Nixon–and unsympathetic characters–fetishist Nite Owl who gets off from doing deeds of daring-do. If not for the electric performances of Jackie Earle Haley and Jeffrey Dean Morgan this film would sink leagues beyond its weight. Haley’s Rorschach is amazing. This tiny firecracker is a moral absolutist who brutally punishes his foes with homemade weaponry and Dirty Harry style quips. Anytime Rorschach is on screen the film comes alive, thanks to his uncompromising nature and penchant for kick-ass brutality. To a lesser degree, Morgan’s Comedian also shoots life into the film with his brash, despicable superhero turned government spook. The Comedian’s disturbing actions cover up a broken man who lives with the weight of terrible truths and sins. In a few scenes, Morgan displays this disturbing duality through masterful control of emotion and delivery.

Haley and Morgan’s performances alone could not save Watchmen from its debilitating disconnect and distance from audiences who barely read comics. Today’s movie-goers absorb superhero films mostly as popcorn entertainment. With the exception of a few masterfully done pieces, (Dark Knight, X-Men 2, American Splendor, Ghost World, etc.,), most movies in the superhero genre are light fare with simple plots for easy consumption by masses that respond more to stunning visuals than complex storytelling. Therein lays the problem with Watchmen. It is an inherently dense and complex story. There is no way even a modicum of the depth and complexity of that 400-page tome could be completely and accurately translated into the brevity of film without alienating mainstream audiences or disappointing core fans. Terry Gilliam, an early contender for the director’s chair when Watchmen was first optioned, was on target when he said Watchmen would be best served as a five-hour miniseries. If Watchmen was filmed as a mini-series it would give viewers time to digest and reflect on the material over time rather than engaging in the futility of parsing the dense narrative in a three hour span. Furthermore, the extended runtime would allow for significant establishment of the Watchmen’s universe with more scenes to better develop the characters and a world that is in dire peril. An extended runtime would also improve viewer investment in characters that are difficult to sympathize with and world that may be too implausible even for the most jaded viewers. In this case, Watchmen was undeserved by a conglomeration of external and internal forces. A work this significant did not need to be adapted into a potential blockbuster. It made the most appropriate impact in the late 80s when it effectively reshapes the superhero genre by attacking its conventions. In the case of the film, its impact is less significant but the result may be the same. Just as Moore’s Watchmen effectively killed the popularity of traditional superhero storytelling, Snyder’s Watchmen may have fired the kill shot on the popularity of the superhero genre. Based on recent statements from Snyder, maybe that’s exactly what he wanted Watchmen to do.