MOVIE REVIEW - COUPLES RETREAT

COUPLES RETREAT – REVIEW

7.5 out of 10

When watching a movie like Couples Retreat, it is important to realize you are not viewing high art.  This is not a film that will be remembered come awards season.  It is not a film that will be remembered as a classic thirty years from now.  Couples Retreat is an amiable, breezy relationship comedy that achieves quite a few big laughs and even tugs on the heart along the way.  The large, talented cast, including Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman and Jon Favreau are all fine actors who excel at ringing laughs out of every situation their characters are thrown in to.     

Co-written by stars Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau (along with Dana Fox), Retreat is about four couples who go on vacation at an all inclusive, plush, beautiful tropical resort in an effort to save one of their marriages.  The only caveat to this heaven on Earth is that each couple must participate in intense skill building exercises created by French, new age guru, Marcel (a goofy Jean Reno), something the three “healthy” couples didn’t realize when agreeing to go on the trip.  If they don’t participate in the exercises they will be forced to leave the island paradise.  At first they rebel at the thought of therapy, but they are seduced by their posh surroundings and they also want to support their friends who need the counseling, so they decide to stay.  The exercises, although predictably zany, are way funnier than you would expect thanks to the sharp comedic skills of the cast and a script packed with some hilariously, witty lines.

After attending a few sessions, each couple learns that their relationships aren’t quite what they thought.  Dave (Vaughn) and Ronnie (Malin Ackerman) are overworked parents who never stop to enjoy life.  Dave works twelve hours a day and by the time he gets home, he doesn’t have the energy to devote to Ronnie, who doesn’t expect much from him at all.  They lead what they believe to be a normal life and on the surface, they are happy.  They soon learn that there is more to a relationship than just getting by and that they need to take more time out of life to enjoy each other.  Vaughn and Ackerman share an easy chemistry and are believable as the beleaguered parents.  Vaughn is his typically motor-mouthed self (this is not a complaint) and is the master of talking in circles around himself to hilarious results.  His anxiety attack during an encounter with sharks is priceless and pretty much any line that Vaughn utters hits its mark.

Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell play Jason and Cynthia, who have been unsuccessfully trying to conceive a child for a year.  They are both uptight individuals who seem to be a match made in heaven, but after breaking their eight year marriage down to charts and graphs presented in power point, they debate getting a divorce.  It is their idea to visit the therapeutic resort to see if their marriage is worth saving.  Bateman and Bell play well off each other, both acting as straight men to the antics of their co-stars.  Seriously, is there a better straight man out there than Jason Bateman?  There is a reason why he is appearing in four movies (Couples Retreat, Extract, Up in the Air and The Invention of Lying) in the second half of 2009.  After toiling away in failed sitcom after failed sitcom, it is pleasure to see Bateman continue to capitalize on his brilliant work on the deliciously, absurd series, Arrested Development.

Joey (Favreau) and Lucy (Kristen Davis) have been married since high school because she was accidentally knocked up.  They no longer even like each other and are still together solely for the benefit of their teenage daughter.  They don’t want to do the skill building exercises because they feel their marriage is too forgone to save it.  Both Favreau and Davis play well off each other, slinging lines laced with venom at one another.  Favreau is fun to watch as a lout with anger issues and gets off quite a few funny lines in the process.  His disdain for Jason’s previous power point presentation about ball cancer is a highlight.  The other couple is played by Faizon Love (Shane) and Kali Hawk (Trudy).  Shane has been recently divorced and is dating the considerably younger Trudy to try and recapture his glory days.  There are quite a few chuckles to be had watching the older, out of shape Shane try to keep up with his young tigress.

It is interesting to note that Favreau and Vaughn’s first project together was about single men and thirteen years later they’ve grown up and are writing about marriage.  It shows how the actors have matured in to men and how they are willing to put that up on screen.  It can’t be said that the script for Couples Retreat is as tight as Swingers, but it succeeds nonetheless.  Sure it gets a little sitcom lesson schmaltzy towards the third act, but for audience members the same age as the stars, there is a certain ring of truth to the film.  Peter Billingsley does a fine job as first time director and I’m sure he will collaborate with buddies Vaughn and Favreau again in the future.

To sum it up,  Couples Retreat is not a great movie, but if you looking for a few easy laughs and fun, charismatic actors, then you will truly enjoy this island romp, relationship comedy. 

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