Paul Rudd works in an unspecified business in Manhattan. His wife, Jennifer Aniston, is making hard-hitting documentaries about penguins dying in the Antarctic that she’s trying to sell to HBO. They buy a “micro-loft” (which is real estate code for a single room about 10×10. Then their life falls to pieces (Rudd’s office gets busted by the FBI…but apparently a major federal crime takedown doesn’t affect him at all), they head to Georgia to live with Rudd’s brother, the seriously over-the-top Ken Marino, and they discover a commune in the Georgia countryside with an assortment of wacky characters.

And when I say “assortment,” I do mean “one of each.” Like there was a checklist.

We saw Wanderlust last night and I remember so little of the movie this morning I’m only writing this to remind myself I saw it. The movie is 98 minutes (feels slighter) of “wacky” stereotypes about 1)Manhattan, 2)hippies, 3)Ken Marino. Manhattanites pick their uber-expensive lofts by location of their favorite coffee joint! Vegans secretly long to eat meat! If you let loose for a while, you’ll find yourself…but not too loose! Because that will cause problems in your most serious relationship!

The whole movie was so thin. I think it was an excuse for a bunch of friends to get together and have someone pay them while they do stupid shtick.

It probably didn’t help that Jennifer Aniston does nothing for me. She’s so bland and uninteresting on-screen. She has no chemistry with Paul Rudd (their characters are supposed to be…married? really?) and she has no chemistry with her off-screen boyfriend Justin Theroux.

This movie also has the most full-frontal nudity (male and female) I’ve seen in a while. In this day and age of the Internet and anything you do on camera lives forever, so why did they do this?

Actually, there’s a lot about this movie that makes me feel like it was probably written at least ten years ago. There are long bits with an Atlanta news station. (Spoiler alert) Rudd and Aniston find happiness by becoming small-press publishers in Brooklyn. Except for Paul Rudd’s iPhone and a GPS unit, there’s no technology that didn’t exist at least ten years ago.

Feel free to pass on this one.

Our movie choice this week was Chronicle or The Woman In Black. We picked Chronicle.

A teenaged boy, alienated at home and at school, decides he’s going to film everything in his life from now on (hence the conceit of this movie). He ends up recording how he and two friends find a weird glowing object in the woods and the effects that come about as a result: they start developing telekinetic powers and a weird sense of what’s going on with the other two in this clique. Their powers seem to grow the more they use them. And if they can stick to the rules and not hurt other people or let anybody else know what’s going on, they’ll be fine.

You can probably guess what happens next.

Chronicle is a pretty simple movie. This summary covers everything in the movie. There is nothing extraneous: why is the main character alienated at home? You’re going to find out two or three times. How do the kids practice with their powers? You’re going to see three or four different examples of how they learn to do new things and increase their powers.

Darin wanted to see Chronicle because one of the teenagers is played by Michael B. Jordan, whom he really liked in Friday Night Lights. He’s pretty good. The other two are pretty good too, although they don’t show great range. They don’t have to: this movie isn’t a character study. It’s mostly a good depiction of how you can make an effective little B-movie with an unknown cast and probably a small budget. I didn’t feel as though I’d wasted my time or money watching Chronicle. I wasn’t watching high art, either.

Lowest point: Something happens in the movie that had me turning to Darin and saying, “Seriously? They went with that cliché?” I know why they did it but…honestly, storytellers out there, if you find yourself going with this particular cliché (here goes, in rot-13: Gur oynpx thl qvrf svefg) REWRITE YOUR SCRIPT PLEASE. Because it bugs the hell out of me, every single time it happens, and it still happens what seems like every single time.

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Wow. According to a comment on Entertainment Weekly’s article about the special effects in Chronicle, the movie was made for 15 million dollars.

That is nothing less of stupendous.

That is less than craft services on most major budget pictures, and Chronicle was number one this week.

Just…wow.

I love Matt Damon. Not in a “Hope we get trapped in an elevator together” kind of way — more in a “Gosh, I’d love to buy him a cup of coffee and talk to him for a while” way.

(In fact, I had a discussion with a friend that I can’t even remember the last time I found an actor so attractive I’d like to get trapped in an elevator with him. Hers: Alexander Skarsgard.)

I think the first time I discovered Matt Damon was the most interesting guy on screen was in Dogma, when he and Ben Affleck were so much more interesting than the crap going on around them* that I decided that they were in a different, better movie, one I wanted to see (a whole hell of a lot more than I wanted to sit through any more of Dogma). I love the Bourne movies to pieces. I even liked The Brothers Grimm, which is a textbook case of taking an interesting screenplay and knifing it through the heart.

But the movie that sealed the deal for me in terms of “a Matt Damon movie is practically an auto-buy for me” was Ocean’s 12. Did you see this? Don’t. It’s a completely terrible movie. I’m amazed reading my own review of it, because as time has gone by, all I can remember is how much of a paycheck deal this was for everyone involved. But Matt Damon totally showed up in Ocean’s 12. Everyone else is reading their lines off of cue cards and Damon is selling his part, unbelievably horrible plot and all.

Here’s the tricky thing about the “Matt Damon” character: his shtick is that he is a regular guy. He’s not pretty like Pitt and Clooney, he’s not flashy like Tom Cruise. Damon is never going to play the psychopathic serial killer on Dexter. Given my general rule about Hollywood actors (that they’re always hiding a big secret), I’m pretty sure that Damon’s regular guy persona means he is a serial killer in real life. You know. It happens.

So. Matt Damon. Love him. Even in really middle of the road family flicks like We Bought A Zoo.

You know everything you need to know from the title of this movie. Guy’s wife died, his children are really lost and aimless, guy decides to buy a house out in the country, which turns out to have a run-down zoo attached to it. Guy decides to save the zoo, discovers he was also lost and aimless but now has a purpose. Of course, he might lose everything as a result of trying to save a run-down, crappy zoo. Tell me: how do you think this movie turns out?

The most annoying thing about this movie is that it has bad language in order to win the coveted PG rating. The rest of the movie is totally a G.

Thomas Haden Church plays Damon’s brother and he is completely frickin’ hilarious. He has maybe 5 minutes on-screen and he’s hilarious in all of them.

Also in the movie: the most charming 7 or 8 year old actress ever, Scarlett Johanssen (fully clothed, sorry guys), and Angus Macfadyen being a loud, drunken Scot. (But I repeat myself.)

Anyhow, if you’re looking for a halfway decent (albeit predictable and non-earthshattering) family flick, We Bought A Zoo is pretty cute.

*You’d think that Dogma would have taught me to avoid Kevin Smith. But no. I’ve seen a couple since then. And now I have totally sworn off seeing movies Smith may have also viewed, let alone directed.