Wanderlust

Every now and then, something comes along which totally shatters the stereotypical views which we hold about certain groups of people. The belief that, for example, all bus drivers are grumpy and rude so-and-so’s, who would prefer it if their job didn't involve any contact with the general public is dispelled the moment I use public transport and pay with anything other than the exact change. You would guess that Wanderlust – a film which is essentially about a bunch of hippies trying to convert city dwellers to commune life – dispels negative stereotypes and promotes a positive and engaging look at free love and all things organic. Well, I'm sorry to say, you'd be wrong. Dead wrong.

From director David Wain (Role Models), Wanderlust stars Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston (oh goodie goodie!) who play George and Linda who, after losing their house in New York, decide to try an alternative way of life in a rural commune to find themselves and discover the important things in life. Billed as a comedy, it is safe to say that this film is unspeakably un-funny. In fact, I genuinely didn't laugh once. At all. I've tried to understand why I didn't; why the 'jokes' were dull and why I was drifting off into a bored stupor. Firstly, the characters were flat and one-dimensional and I felt a total apathy towards them. Actually, I take that back, I did feel something towards them. I wanted to hit them over the head with one of their home-made guitars in the hope it would instil some sense into their dense, pot-fuelled brains.

Let's take, for example, the protagonists: Linda and George. The film opens with the couple buying a studio apartment in swanky West Village. Their reasons for buying in that location? It's close to their favourite coffee shop. I'm sorry but what?! These are characters who base one of the most important decisions of their lives on how easy it is to get a double shot decaf soya latte with no froth, thank you very much. Things don't get much better when they reach the commune and decide at the drop of a hat that they've been living a false life and need to smoke weed to fulfil their life potential. In short, I care more about Manchester's sewage system than I did about Aniston and Rudd's painfully irritating characters.

And then there are the hippies. Every single stereotype about Bohemian living is conformed to in the search of producing 'comedy gold'. However, the insistence by Wain and fellow screenwriter Ken Marino to load the screenplay with crass and totally un-funny dialogue in an attempt to raise a few laughs about a nudist wine-maker was depressingly average at best. As I sat there, watching ninety-eight painful minutes of characters I found totally un-engaging, doing things I couldn't care less about, I felt myself slowly wasting away, as if the hippies were sucking all the life out of me to make their own annoying peace-loving and hairy lives even more grating. I was not amused.

Wanderlust is a truly awful film with about as much entertainment value as cleaning a cheese grater with your tongue. Its narrative is predictable, un-involving and mind-numbingly tedious and its characters will drive you to distraction. All the prints of Wanderlust should be thrown to the bottom of the deepest ocean and forgotten about as a mistake that Jennifer Aniston made in her otherwise unblemished career. Hang on, did I just say that or have I been eating too many macro-biotic bean sprouts?!

Clapperboard Rating: *