Couples Retreat (*)

Directed by: Peter Billingsley

Starring: Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Faizon Love, Jon Favreau, Malin Ackerman, Kristin Bell, Kristin Davis, Kali Hawk, Tasha Smith, Carlos Ponce, Peter Serafinowicz, Jean Reno, Temuera Morrison

Seen: December 12^th 2009

* Out of ****

Couples Retreat is one of those movies with a great trailer advertising it, but in which all but one of the movie’s truly funny jokes get used. I would go so far as to say that some of the humour in the movie is funnier when taken out of context in the trailer than it is when seen as part of the story as it is used in the movie.

Jason (Bateman) and Cynthia (Bell) are having marital problems, and decide to do something about it in their typically (read psychology textbook control freak couple cliché) ordered way of doing things, they prepare a power-point slideshow to market the perfect getaway to their friends to try and revitalise their marriage. Dave (Vaughn) and Ronnie (Ackerman) are the normal (read psychology textbook parents who have problems but are OK cliché) couple with two sweet kids and the perfect, if busy, life. Joey (Favreau) and Lucy (Davis) are the unfaithful (read psychology textbook couple only holding on in marriage until their daughter leaves for college cliché) couple who do not see each other in the same light as earlier years. And finally there is Shane (Love), divorced from his wife Jennifer (Smith) and now dating Trudy (Hawk), a 20 year old girl who lives for the party and the active life-style (read mid-life crisis younger model of you wife cliché?).

After a bit of convincing, everyone decides to go along, because Jason and Cynthia beg them to. They cannot afford to go to Eden (the beautifully presented holiday resort) on their own, but found a great group rate, and they really trust in only this to get them back together, not their own passion for each other, but an external fix… On the island the vacationers are immediately split into two groups, the couples go to Eden West, where they will do boring couples skill-building activities and hours of therapy sessions with therapists who seem to want to break relationships, and the others go to Eden East, the party-hard singles side of the island where the focus is simply sex (in the words of Sctanley (a creepy Serafinowicz)).

The movie is in essence four (attempts at) romantic comedy rolled into one, with the general romantic comedy storyline for each one, but dumbed down to all fit into one movie. No single couple is given enough screen time to actually get the audience involved, and the Disney nature of everything working out also smacks of contrivance. I heard people complaining that at least one of the couples should have split up during the movie.

Couples Retreat is a formulaic representation of copious amounts of relationship troubles that get solved by the simplest means available, in some cases almost at Deus ex machina level. The plot is terrible, as the movie just see-saws between some beach scene that takes ages to build up to a Vince Vaughn punch-line, and ensemble-type therapist scenes with all of the couples (each couple has their own therapist). The plot follows the stupidly manufactured line of annoying the characters so much that they eventually will not take this anymore, which is then taken as the point of resolution; all your problems are now solved. Lazy writing…

And regarding Vince Vaughn’s monologues: it is as if the writers saw Vaughn in Wedding Crashers and Old School and tried to mimic his antics there. Couples Retreat is a terrible movie promoting terrible values, with absolutely no real life lesson, which is the least a movie like this should aspire to.