“Be an ass for love…” - ‘Couples Retreat’ Review

Posted on October 20, 2009 - 7:26pm by michael So the setup works great. Four married couples travel to an island retreat/marital counseling resort called Eden West in order to save one of their marriages. But the location is used as nothing but a stunningly beautiful backdrop against which to play a paper-thin and poorly realized comedic drama. Half of the characters are surprisingly believable as real people and real friends, while the rest are goofy caricatures. As the story plays out, the movie becomes less and less of a comedy but not more and more of a drama, simply because the stories of the four different marriages are so thin and uninteresting that even the powerful acting talent involved isn’t enough to pull us in. The biggest problem that a movie like this can encounter is the feeling that it’s full of cheap, weak humor, except for a few amusing jokes that we saw in the trailer. Movie previews are supposed to give us a sneak peak at bigger things to come, not highlight a few clever jokes to get us into a theater, and then give us the bland stuff. That’s like giving a little kid a few marshmallows to get him interested in Lucky Charms, and then giving him a bowl full of those boring little brown pieces. Remember those? I hated those things. Okay so here’s the situation. Jason (Jason Bateman, who's character might be named after himself because he's once again playing himself) and Cynthia (Kristen Bell) are married and unable to have a child. Dave (Vince Vaughn) and Ronnie (Malin Ackerman) are happily married but romance has been replaced by children. Shane (Faizon Love) and his wife Jennifer (Tasha Smith) are divorced and he’s now dating a mouthy, 20-year-old bimbo named Trudy (Kali Hawk).  And Joey (Jon Favreau) and Lucy (Kristen Davis) also seem to be happily married except for Joey’s constantly wandering eye. The problem is that, even though the characters themselves are believable and even come across as life-long friends, the problems that plague their marriages are so specific and constant that it only adds to the overall feel of a by-the-numbers formula film, especially since each couple never really behaves in any way other than what is expected to illustrate their respective problems. I have a tendency to be charmed more often than not by formulaic romantic comedies, as long as they aren’t too derivative, but the comedy just isn’t there in Couples Retreat. The movie does have some amusing moments, and Vince Vaughn is as watchable as ever, but stellar cast only calls attention to the childishness of the comedy. Joey, for example, has a pubescent teenager incident during his massage, the latino heartthrob yoga instructor alternately gyrates his ass in the men’s faces and dry-humps their wives, and the manager of the island paradise, Cstanley, explains that his name is spelled “with a ‘c.’” [caption id="attachment_60966" align="alignright" width="394" caption="I know exactly how you feel, Vince..."][/caption] I’m guessing you won’t hear anyone repeating that line on their way out of the theater, but what was the deal with that yoga scene? It’s so preposterous and unfunny that it’s amazing it made it into the final cut. The next scene has two of the wives talking about it, where one explains how inappropriate and uncomfortable it was. I bet I felt just as uncomfortable as she did. But believe it or not, the conflict in the movie has nothing to do with marital problems, but with the childish Trudy taking off one night and making her way over to Eden East, which is sort of like Eden West except it’s designed around promiscuity rather than marital healing. Joey, of course, couldn’t be happier to make a covert mission into Eden West in the middle of the night, but it’s one of the oddest things about the movie that it reaches its fever pitch of boringness when it gets to the party scene. [caption id="attachment_60967" align="alignleft" width="385" caption="Oh, did I mention the Guitar Hero tournament?"][/caption] From here on out it’s a tired march through romantic comedy clichés that is distantly below the talent of the actors involved. Jon Favreau is a talented comedian but spent most of his screen time in this movie with his eyes popping out of his head and without a single amusing line except the one about this place looking like a screensaver. None of the women are very distinguishable from each other, except Kali Hawk, who I don’t know much about but who is stunningly beautiful and really shouldn’t dumb herself down like this. The story was written by Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, which is only all the more reason why it should have been so much better than it is. But even though my review is a little on the negative side, Couples Retreat isn't a terrible movie, but unfortunately the tagline is just a little too descriptive – “It may be paradise, but it’s no vacation.” The Bean Meter