As a practicing Catholic, a title like Wanderlust (2013) gives me pause.  After all, it has the word “lust” in it.  The Church defines that word as a “disordered desire or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure.”  What it is talking about is sin.  The dictionary renders the word as simply “very strong sexual desire.”  I do not believe these two definitions are far apart, particularly when you look at the consequences of lust.  Such feelings have had consequences on personal and societal levels since the dawn of time.  The title of this movie adds to this thesis.  If you swap out sex with “travel,” you have the Oxford meaning of “wander.”  In other words, it is a force that propels people towards something else.  The Church refers to such things as disordered or inordinate because it usually means going from something good to something bad.  Sex is a wonderful gift from God, but lust makes it a god.  It becomes an idol that must be served, usually to one’s detriment. The same thing can be said of travel or wandering.  There is nothing wrong with getting out there and seeing the world, but it becomes something else when you are feeling compelled to do so.  As we shall see, all these themes have a role to play in today’s film.

From the start, you can already see signs with George (Paul Rudd) and Linda Gergenblatt (Jennifer Aniston) that they are feeling Wanderlust.  George is moving up in the world of finance, while Jennifer is hoping to get her penguin documentary aired on Home Box Office (HBO).  With these possibilities on the horizon, they make the considered leap to purchase an overpriced, tiny studio apartment in New York’s West Village.  Unfortunately, shortly after they move in, George loses his job when his company is raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Linda’s film is turned down because it is about the arctic birds having testicular cancer.  In desperation, they turn to Rick Gergenblatt (Ken Marino), George’s monster of a brother.  Rick offers for his sibling and his wife, who Rick makes a pass at, to come stay with him at his Atlanta McMansion and take a job with Rick’s business.  On the car ride down, after driving all day and well into the night, George and Linda stop at what they think is a simple bed and breakfast called Elysium.  On the driveway, they are greeted by a naked man with a wine glass who tries to warn them not to turn around, as they sensibly attempt to immediately do.  In the process, their car is turned over and they are forced to stay.  Upon getting through another odd introduction from their hostess, Kathy (Kerri Kenney-Silver), the Gergenblatts go to sleep . . . only to be awakened a few hours later by noise downstairs.  George is sent to investigate, followed soon thereafter by Linda when he does not come back to bed.  What they encounter is a party in full swing, but not just any soiree.  George and Linda have stumbled upon a hippie commune.  There is the requisite amount of stereotypical things one would associate with such a setting, including drug use, but it seems to suit them for the moment.  The next day, they leave with the various strange denizens there to see them off.  The get to Rick’s house, and it turns into a disaster.  His wife, Marisa Gergenblatt (Michaela Watkins), is clearly repressed, and Rick is defiantly and openly unfaithful.  Also, Rick is, unsurprisingly, a terrible employer.  Thus, within a twenty-four-hour period, George and Linda decide to return to the commune.  While Linda is skeptical about this choice, George assuages her by saying that it is only temporary until they can figure out their next move.  Thus, they attempt to adjust to life without any rules.  The breakthrough comes when they are invited to the so-called “truth circle.”  This sounds more serious than it is because this is a comedy.  Still, George tells Linda that she does not follow through on anything in life, and she eventually admits to this being fact.  It also helps that she had just taken a swig of hallucinogenic tea.  Her acid trip convinces her that they are in the right place.  Meanwhile, he begins to see their new environs differently.  It is not solely the loss of their car with the commune’s shared system of ownership or the lack of doors.  It is when he is propositioned by Eva (Malin Åkerman) that he is confronted with the full extent of what it means to live in a “free love” community.  While he is attracted to Eva, he is also not prepared for how willing Linda is to sleep with Seth (Justin Theroux), the de facto leader of the commune who is always a decade or two behind with his technology references.  Linda has sex with Seth almost immediately, but George finds that he is (very awkwardly) unable to do the deed with Eva.  Thus, he angrily leaves and slinks back to Rick to humbly accept whatever work he can get.  Meanwhile, Seth has secretly sold the commune out to a developer that wants to put a casino on the land, and he proposes that Linda come away with him and the $11,000 he got from the deal, and move to Miami.  As for George, seeing Marisa and Rick’s marriage once more makes him realize how awful he has been, so he takes his brother’s car and goes back to retrieve Linda.  Besides, she had surreptitiously been eating steak at a local diner.  Seth tries to prevent George from entering the commune, but he fails along with being exposed as a traitor.  We end with a successful George and Linda starting a publishing company back in New York, printing mainly the unexpected best seller of the naked man.

I had seen Wanderlust when it came out in the theater.  Thus, I was ready for the awkward exchange between Eva and George and promptly fast forwarded through it.  There is nothing inappropriate about it in terms of nudity, though there is some of that in the movie.  This is about hippies, after all, or what Hollywood tells you they are.  What is tough to watch is his repetition of the word “dick,” not only with her but in front of a mirror leading up to the scene, and the weird accent he uses while doing it.  I do not understand how this swing towards misogyny fits with the commune theme, aside from being uncomfortable.  What is more comfortable for a practicing Catholic is the idea of a commune itself, or at least how the broader culture would recognize it.  Unfortunately, the hippie movement in the United States has hijacked the term, and rightly or wrongly interjected it with the stereotypes we associate with it today.  There are some intersections between their philosophies and what the Church teaches.  What I sometimes rail against, though, is the thought that hippies started this somehow revolutionary form of living.  Acts 4:32 says that early Christians “shared everything in common.”  The word “common,” by the way, is at the root of “commune.”  Another word that stems from it is community.  However you want to define people living together in a certain area and having aligned interests, the Catholic Church has been doing this for centuries.  The Church teaches that people, in some form, are meant to live in community.  Monks and nuns still practice this today.  One does not need sex, especially lust, in order to happily live together with others, no matter the nature of your relationship.  While I do not approve of the journey they go on to get there, I feel like this is where George and Linda land at the end.

If you have seen Wanderlust, you may argue with me that it is not really about sex.  Still, that act serves as the catalyst for the denouement.  Because of these factors, I do not recommend this movie.  You can find these lessons in better formats.