Everyone you would want in a comedy

Warning: I am about to ruin many of the good jokes in Wanderlust.

This is the third and final post about my Father's Day mini-marathon -- it was Father's Day in Australia on Sunday -- which means that I don't have any new discoveries from my latest viewing of This is Spinal Tap.

There's a recurring joke in David Wain's Wanderlust in which Alan Alda's hippie burnout Carvin Waggie must list all nine people with whom he originally bought the commune -- sorry, "intentional community" -- known as Elysium, every time he mentions the purchase. "Jerry Beaver, Stephanie Davis, Ronnie Shamus, Danielle Meltzer, Janie Brody, Billy Marcus, Glen Stover, Tony Piloski, and Janice Woo."

"Thanks, acid," another character sarcastically retorts on about his third time doing it, in a rare display of cynicism by a community member toward one of their own.

In that spirit, I am going to list the frankly staggering number of amazing comic actors who make this film such a consistent delight, who are also responsible for making Wanderlust one of my favorite comedies of the 21st century.

Because just a list does not make very engaging material for a blog post, I'll also include a favorite moment involving that actor/character from the film. 

Let's start with:

Alan Alda - Aging hasn't caused Alda to lose any of his comic spark. Sure, the listing of names is a great bit, but my favorite moment might be when he has a brief argument with Paul Rudd's George Gergenblatt over his contention that "money literally buys you nothing." "I think you mean metaphorically," says George. Carvin repeats his point until he is left staring at Rudd and Rudd just has to concede the point.  

Paul Rudd - Rudd has always been a comedy MVP but he's really pushing his range here. The scene where he practices dirty talk in front of the mirror, prior to an expected session of free-love lovemaking sanctioned by his wife, is the hardest I laugh in this film. Just watch the faces he makes as he says "I'm gonna get up in your vadge with my dee-yuk!"

Jennifer Aniston - Aniston is usually a straight woman but she has fun with this one, especially in a scene where she's "tripping her balls off" (to quote Rudd) on ayahuasca tea.

Malin Akerman - I think this is when I really started to like Akerman, though she lowered my defenses in Watchmen. Her micro-reactions to George's nervous dirty talk, which take her from enthusiastic to horrified within 30 seconds, are perfect.

Joe Lo Truglio - Yep, before there was Brooklyn Nine Nine there was Joe Lo Truglio as a nudist would-be novelist who wears a "dangle bag" over his testicles in order not to drop pubic hair into the grapes he's crushing to make wine.

Kathryn Hahn - In the nine years since Wanderlust I have come to recognize Hahn as one of this generation's most brilliant comic actresses, but she was comparatively new to me here. She doesn't have many standout moments here, but when she offers to substitute herself in the free love for a grossed-out Akerman, it turns out she's perfectly suited to George, since her dirty talk involves the discussion of her "vadge" as well.

Jordan Peele - I'm pretty sure I had not yet discovered Key & Peele when this came out. Peele has a couple shining moments, first when he won't leave the door-less bathroom while George is trying to take a shit, then when he parks George's car in the middle of a lake and can say only "It's crazy. I mean, can you believe that? Can. You. Believe. It?"

Keegan Michael Key - His role is much smaller but of course I have to mention him next. He's the HBO yes man who agrees with everything his boss says about why they don't want to buy Linder Gergenblatt's documentary about penguins with testicular cancer -- even when that viewpoint is a direct contradiction to something he just said.

We're only like halfway there.

Justin Theroux - By size of role Theroux should have already been mentioned. He's the commune's guru, and his list of modern devices that are too modern for him is hilarious. "You know, you can really get caught in that web of beepers, and Zenith televisions, and walkmans, and discmans, and floppy disks, and zip drives! Laser discs, and answering machines, and Nintendo power glove." (Aniston's deadpan response is perfect: "Wow, you know so much about technology.") 

Lauren Ambrose - Who knew Claire on Six Feet Under was funny? I do now. She's ridiculously pregnant with Jordan Peele's baby -- "he's African American," she points out helpfully -- and her spontaneous birth scene is comedy gold.

Oh but don't forget there's a whole part of this movie that doesn't take place on the commune -- sorry, "intentional community."

Ken Marino - No one plays a douchebag successful brother better. Living in Atlanta where he runs a successful port-o-john company, George's brother is the ultimate inappropriate non-PC asshole with too much money. Vulgarity is rarely better. Typical line of dialogue, when looking at Linda: "Your body is redonculous!" as he pantomimes grabbing her breasts.

Michael Watkins - Marino's long-suffering wife driven to morning margaritas. I've soured a bit on Watkins in recent years -- the volume has been turned up way too loud on her last five years' worth of performances -- but here she's excellent as she blurts out a series of semi-drunken complaints that ends with "I have mixed feelings about being a parent."

Linda Lavin - The Broadway vet has what basically amounts to a cameo as the real estate agent who sells George and Linda their Manhattan "micro loft" -- which she only starts acknowledging as a studio apartment once they try to sell it. Her description of her blind husband's sexual gifts -- some left up to the imagination, some not -- is a funny surprise. 

Oh and then just for good measure:

Ian Michael Black, David Wain and Michael Showalter - These are basically just cameos, but these fellow The State alums join the director for a scene in which they sit around the set of a news program, making increasingly lewd and suggestive comments about their field reporter who just covered a nudist protest, and about how they wouldn't mind if she would participate in such a protest in the future.

And then my two discoveries from this movie:

Kerri Kenney - I'm sure I've seen her in other things but her name is unfamiliar to me. She's the woman who originally meets George and Linda when they arrive for a night at the bed and breakfast. She has a couple good bits, but the one I remember is when she asks George "where John, Paul and Ringo are," and keeps riding the bit through George's awkward silence until she finally says "You know I'm kidding right?"

Jessica St. Clair - The field reporter who is the subject of the lewd comments. This is more subtle work as it involves her just becoming increasingly embarrassed as her male colleagues prove themselves to be monsters. The horror of the objectified slowly dawns on her face.

I've just listed 18 really funny people -- twice the number that joined Carvin Waggie in buying Elysium -- and I think I've probably even missed some.

If you're not all that familiar with Wanderlust, it's time for you to change that.

Picking over the bones of another video store

When I first arrived in Australia, I described it to a friend back home as "kind of like the U.S. in the 1990s."

This is not to say that most things are backward or particularly behind here. In fact, certain things -- like the ease of paying for goods, where you can sometimes just tap your card against a screen -- are a bit ahead of the U.S. Rather, what's old-fashioned is the quaint ongoing viability of certain things that have long since fallen by the wayside in the U.S.

Pay telephones, for example. It's easy to find a pay telephone here in Melbourne. They are few and far between in the U.S., but they are still plentiful here, still a resource that provides a useful service to the public.

Book stores? Don't get me started. You can't go a city block in almost any part of the city without tripping over a book store. And the price people will pay for books -- even used books -- is absurd. I'm sure people have their kindles and their iPads, but by and large, they still love reading a good old paperback or hardcover book.

And video stores?

Well, it looks like the times are finally catching up with Australia in some respects.

Until recently, I had two video stores that were equidistant from my house. The one I regularly frequented -- well, on $2 new release Tuesdays, anyway -- was called Video Ezy, and then Network Video. The other I've never even set foot inside, because a phone called told me they didn't have any equivalent to $2 Tuesdays.

Well, I'm going to have to learn what deals they do have, because Video Ezy/Network Video is no more.

My wife broke the news to me about a week back. She'd received a text, apparently, that they were going out of business and that everything was on sale. Why I didn't receive this same text, I don't know -- they texted me once when they thought I didn't return a movie on time, which turned out to be their error. Since then, they must have lost my number.

So I planned to go there on Wednesday, to pay my last respects.

Except it was closed on Wednesday. From now until April 2nd, when it shutters for good, it will only be open Thursday through Sunday. Which I can certainly understand, since they're not renting anything anymore, only clearing out the remaining unsold inventory.

I made sure to return this past Saturday, this time with only the older of my two sons in tow.

And I guess my purpose was not so much to thank Video Ezy for all the good times -- it had always been a pretty lame video store, if I'm being honest -- but rather, to figure out which movies I could buy on the cheap.

So though I do still recognize the passing of each remaining video store that closes with a bit of sadness, now the inevitability of the event has adjusted my perspective. This new version of me doesn't dwell on the sadness. Instead, apparently, this new me tries to dig in and find deals.

I instinctively avoided the new release wall, because a) those movies were selling for $7 instead of $3, and b) I don't necessarily want to buy movies that have just come out on video, since they aren't the kind of old favorites I typically add to my collection. (The good titles had been picked pretty clean by Saturday, anyway.)

It's an interesting challenge, to choose titles from a whole video store that's separated out by genre, and know that pretty much everything is affordable. There were still a couple thousand titles available, so it wasn't like I was down to just the dregs. My idea was to look extra hard at the comedies, because those tend to be the ones with the most repeat watchability (and the ones my wife is most likely to repeat watch with me). I gave cursory looks at the other sections as well, but came away with more comedies than anything else.

Having not bought a movie in more than year, I thought I could go a little hog wild. So after circling the store for about 20 minutes, coming up with an initial pile of purchases about twice this size, and driving my son to the brink of boredom-inspired insanity, I came away with the following seven titles:

Seen this twice, but the second viewing was probably four years ago. My wife likes it too, so we'll probably throw it in within six months.

Really liked this one and have only seen it once. Also, I don't know if my wife has seen it yet, and it's right up her alley.

Comments for Cedar Rapids are pretty much ditto for this.

I've already seen this twice, but it's been more than three years since my last viewing. My wife doesn't like this as much as I do. Then again, I don't think anyone likes this as much as I do.

Okay, leaving the comedies behind now ...

Did I say "leaving the comedies behind"? I should have waited one more movie before saying that. The funniest Star Trek is in my top 100 of all time, and I haven't seen it in forever.

My favorite movie of 2005. I may not have a burning desire to see this again, having seen it again about five years ago, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to own one of my #1 ranked movies. This was the last to make the cut.

And finally ...

I've seen this movie three times already and it only came out in 2013. Obviously I love this movie and need to own it.

Some that didn't make the final cut: Private Parts, Go, Headhunters, Philadelphia, a few others I can't remember. These are movies I like or in some cases love, but I just couldn't quite pull the trigger, either for repeat watchability reasons (Philadelphia) or having just seen them recently reasons (again, Philadelphia). Besides, that was $21 worth of movies, and I still had to pay another $10 for two videos my son wanted -- which were priced at $5 apiece because they were brand new.

So while I'm sad that another chapter is closing in the way we watch movies, at least I can salve my wounds with seven nice new additions to my video collection.

A displaced Wanderlust

You might say that my copy of Wanderlust went a-wanderin'.

And by "my copy" I mean the copy I picked up at a Redbox in Van Nuys, California, and returned to a Redbox in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

I've long known that you can allegedly return a Redbox rental to "any kiosk," and I decided my business trip to Albuquerque was the perfect time to put that to the test.

Any kiosk? Not just "any kiosk in the greater metropolitan area where you live"? We'll see. 

And what more perfect movie than a movie about the yearning to find yourself through travel?

Wanderlust is not actually so much about that as about finding yourself in a different living scenario, so the title is a bit of a misnomer. But nevertheless.

I watched all but 15 minutes of it on my brief 90-minute flight, sitting comfortable alone on my half of the aisle. (I had no choice but to be alone -- on this tiny American Eagle jet, there was only one seat per row on the left side of the plane.) Then I finished the remaining 15 minutes in my hotel after dinner before striking out to see Ted in the theater.

After Ted -- a screening that was nearly twice nixed by the GPS giving me bad directions -- I survived a dead-battery-in-my-rental-car scare at just after midnight, and returned Wanderlust to a Walgreens whose address I had specifically looked up earlier in order to accomplish this very feat.

Upon inserting the DVD, I thought I had caught Redbox in a lie. It balked at the insertion, claiming I did not have it properly oriented. I thought, "This is how they get out of their 'any kiosk' guarantee. Give you some other error until you finally give up and bring it back home to where you rented it."

But upon my second insertion, in I swear the exact same orientation, it accepted my return with the usual amount of politeness and gratitude. "Hah!" I exclaimed, and got back into my rental car in the desolate Walgreens parking lot.

As for the movies I watched on this business trip, which has not quite ended yet as I sit in the Albuquerque airport, drinking a much-deserved beer after having to delay my return six hours as a result of a very stressful crisis that ultimately got resolved?

I didn't so much care for Ted, but Wanderlust! David Wain, you've finally connected with me.

Happy trails on your way back to Los Angeles, Wanderlust -- or wherever you may find yourself next.