Tag: Jennifer Aniston

Wanderlust

“Wanderlust” is a silly mess of a comedy in the way it tries to mock a hippie lifestyle while still grooving off their good vibrations.

David Wain’s film follows New York married couple George and Linda (Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston) to the Elysium commune in Georgia after they lose their jobs and apartment, a place where every hippie cliché ever imagined is piled on to a disturbing degree.

George and Linda are the only two characters not on an extreme end of the spectrum, be it the free loving, voodoo chanting, nature embracing and technologically challenged Seth (Justin Theroux) or George’s aggressive, douchebag brother Rick (Ken Marino).

Rudd is amusing in small-scale moments when the script allows one of the normals to be funny, namely because he will say yes to any bit, no matter how ridiculous.

But the movie’s screwball nature to top itself can be overwhelming and just plain gross. Not even an actor as likeable as Rudd can make carrying a newborn’s placenta around funny.

2 stars

Horrible Bosses

Sometimes I wonder how anyone actually writes a comedy like “Horrible Bosses.” Who has the thesaurus that helps find smutty replacements for perfectly normal words? Sometimes the unrealistically raunchy factor in a movie like this serves as a disconnect from the otherwise witty and creative screenplay at hand.

At times, “Horrible Bosses” seems dirty for the sake of achieving an R-rating. Despite being about three guys plotting a way to kill their boss, the gratuitous language and casual discussion of rape make the material mature. For instance, somehow I question the ability of the word “dickswath” to come up in conversation naturally, and it makes me realize how contrived the rest of their dialogue appears.

It all subtracts from an otherwise darkly clever revenge comedy. Nick, Dale and Kurt (Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis) each have sadistic bosses controlling and ruining their lives. For Nick, he’s worked to the bone and denied a corner office promotion by his boss Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey). Kurt is left at the mercy of an uncaring coke addict Bobby Pellitt (Colin Farrell). And Dale is sexually harassed by his boss in the dentist office Dr. Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston), although only Dale really sees her as a problem. Continue reading “Horrible Bosses”