Journey by Frame

One of the things I find interesting about Wanderlust, and that I didn’t get to discuss in my review, is how it seems like the logical next step for Wain as a filmmaker. Wet Hot American Summer features a scene in which the camp counselors decide to meet up 10 years later at a precise time and location (the joke is that they quibble about whether to meet at 9:00am or 9:30am). At the end of the film, after the credits, we see them all meet up, and of course, one of them is late because he thought they agreed on 9:30am.

In Role Models, Paul Rudd’s character expresses bewilderment that the last 10 years of his life have seemingly flew by without him accomplishing anything to show for them. It was made in 2008, whereas Wet Hot American Summer was made in 2001: not quite 10 years separate the two films, but the actors in the earlier film were much older than the characters they played (which, I think, is part of the reason it’s funny). It’s almost like the span of time separating those two films stands in itself for the sense of dislocation and confusion expressed by Rudd (and felt by many in the audience, I assume: it’s not at all uncommon today to feel like life is going just a little too fast for us). I’m discounting Wain’s 2007 film The Ten because I haven’t seen it and because it’s more skit-oriented.

In Wanderlust, Paul Rudd returns and this time he’s married (to Jennifer Aniston). If you’ll remember, one of the main sub-plots in Role Models was about Rudd trying to prove his suitability as a partner to his girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks), who breaks up with him at the beginning of the film. So in a way, Wanderlust picks up where Role Models left off: Rudd’s character has it together a bit more but is still missing something, and this time, it’s not his own recklessness and irresponsibility that creates obstacles but an external event (he goes to work one day to find government agents seizing everything, and his boss informs him that the company is done). Beneath all of this, of course, is the state of America’s economy in the years since Role Models, which the film foregrounds pretty well and which I discuss in my review. I wouldn’t say the characters Paul Rudd plays in these three films are the same person, but they are shifting faces of the same general tendency, manifestations of 21st century masculinity. And Rudd is the perfect actor to embody this everyman type of role. I think there’s something special about him that he can pull of these types of roles without seeming in the least bit an entitled and spoiled asshole. He has his flaws, of course, but as far as heterosexual white guys go, he’s practically the most likable version imaginable out of the options presented to us by mainstream America.

My review (for Spectrum Culture) can be found here. An excerpt:

Comedy’s aesthetic liability is its tendency to treat people as mere fodder for laughs. The perceived enemy of comedy is political correctness, but in reflexively turning away, comedy sometimes wallows in juvenile disobedience, willing to do anything to disturb our sense of propriety for the sake of a joke or gag. Writer/director David Wain has largely solved this problem through a comedic sensibility that is thoughtful and sweet without ever sacrificing its humor. In his first film Wet Hot American Summer, one of the funniest scenes involved a camp counselor sneaking off to have gay sex with another counselor (played hilariously by a pre-fame Bradley Cooper) after ditching his friends, who lament that they’ll never get their friend laid (with a woman, they mistakenly presume). Rather than distance the viewer from this scene’s vigorous gayness, Wain takes it seriously, allowing its passion to pierce through the film’s parodic aesthetic. Wain is thus funny and sweet without ever reducing his characters to harmful, and comedically unnecessary, stereotypes. His new film Wanderlust is similarly thoughtful, even politically “responsible,” and it should serve as a model for American comedies.