Imperial Valley News

Hollywood, California - Couples Retreat - Film Review by Lisa Miller (2009) Directed by Peter Billingsley, Starring Vince Vaughn, Malin Akerman, Jon Favreau, Faizon Love, Jason Bateman, Kristen Bell, Kristin Davis, Peter Serafinowicz, Jean Reno, Kali Hawk, Carlos Ponce, John Michael Higgins, Ken Jeong, Tasha Smith - Universal/Rated PG-13/Comedy/107 minutes.

A beautiful resort, specializing in harmful marriage therapy billed as a new agey relationship fix, provides the backdrop for a mid-life movie, written by friends Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn - who also star. The friends each play discontented husbands ungrateful for their intelligent, beautiful wives. However, the boys are in their element when bouncing barbs off one another.

To broaden the film’s appeal, Vaughn and Favreau (in conjunction with screenwriter Dana Fox) pen representative couple types.

Jason and Cynthia (Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell), are tightly-wound PowerPoint presentation geeks, using flow charts to persuade their friends to join them for a couples retreat at a tropical island resort. Their friends include: Dave (Vince Vaughn), a hard-working family man subjected to the pee-everywhere tactics of his youngest son Kevin (scene stealing Colin Baiocchi) and Dave’s neglected wife Ronnie (Malin Akerman); Joey and Lucy (Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis) - a couple counting down the days until their teen daughter leaves for college so they can finally divorce; and Shane (Faizon Love), rebounding from divorce and dating a young salesgirl (Kali Hawk) who calls him Daddy.

Once there, the couples gaze longingly at the azure waters and fantasize about drinks with little umbrellas while they are humiliated by a nonsensical marriage guru (Jean Reno) or browbeaten by the resort’s Britishy director (Peter Serafinowicz). The couple’s hopes of getting extra shut eye or making whoopee are foiled by 6 am therapy sessions where the touchy-feely prodding goes on until someone loses it or cries.

The men are encouraged to loosen up by following the technique of a Yoga instructor (Carlos Ponce) who teaches them to stretch while dangling his bikini’d crotch inches from their faces. Next he demonstrates couple’s stretching exercises on the men’s’ wives. These are choreographed to maximum pornographic effect, though after each demonstration, the instructor dispels any jealousy by patting each woman’s male partner on the rump.

Somehow, this vanity project earned a PG-13 rating although the predictable set ups and repeated sight gags are throwbacks to 1950s comedies barely meriting a PG. There are no surprises and few laughs to justify aiming beneath the lowest common denominator. Whether married or dating, couples looking for fun should beat a hasty retreat from this one.