Couples Retreat (2009)

Welcome to Couples Retreat, or, as I think of it, two overrated writer-performers presenting a 113-minute slideshow of how they spent their tropical vacation. It may be more amusing than your aunt and uncle’s photos from their trip to Branson, but only slightly. Maybe.

Co-writer Vince Vaughn gets the only before-the-title billing of the cast; he’s a…well, I’ll come back to his “occupation.” He plays Dave, an overgrown frat boy with precocious kids and a hot wife (Malin Akerman) whom he virtually ignores. Dave’s friend Joey (Jon Favreau and his multiple chins) is going through the motions with his too-hot wife (Kristin Davis) until their slutty teenage daughter moves out and they can get a divorce. Dave and Joey have another friend, Shane (Faizon Love), who is divorced and now cavorting with 20-year-old party girl Trudy (Kali Hawk). But it’s a fourth couple in this circle of friends, Jason (Jason Bateman) and his wife Cynthia (Kristen Bell), who start the flimsy plot of the movie when they convene their friends to announce — via PowerPoint presentation — that their own marriage is in trouble due to their problems conceiving. As cowriters of this film, Vaughn and Favreau also seem unable to conceive anything.

Jason and Cynthia have learned of a tropical island resort which offers canoeing, jet-skiing, and — presumably optional — therapy sessions for couples. It’s too expensive for them to go alone, but, in one of many contrivances, there’s a half-price group rate if all four couples go. Oh, and they would all have to go next week. Despite the short notice, Dave and Joey’s kids, and the fact that divorcée Shane can’t afford to buy a motorcycle without a cosigner, they all show up at the Eden Resort where two uncomfortable details await them: first, all the young bikini-clad single girls are shuttled off to the theoretically inaccessible “Eden East”; and second, the therapy sessions are mandatory for all the couples and led by a babbling French “therapist” named Marcel (Jean Reno).

If you’ve seen the trailer for Couples Retreat, I’m sorry to say you’ve already witnessed the highlights of the film, with the exception of the movie’s last line, delivered by a young boy who upstages everyone else. The kid is cute, but his presence in the film is merely to make the women in the audience say “Awww”; there’s also a scantily clothed, Fabio-like, yoga instructor present to make them say “Oooh.”

As the couples endure private therapy sessions and ridiculous “group therapy” activities — including a bit with the worst CGI sharks I’ve ever seen — Joey wants to play pussy-hound (why, when he’s married to Kristin Davis??) and does whatever he can to get over to Eden East. In this, as in everything I’ve ever seen of his work, Jon Favreau reminds me of a guy I knew in college who costumed himself for Halloween as a giant spermatozoa. I’ve never found Favreau and Vaughn’s machismo shtick appealing or humorous, and that includes their film Swingers. Which leads me to reveal another personal bias…

Early in the film, it’s briefly mentioned that Vaughn’s character works with video games, but it’s not made clear if he’s a designer or creator. In a climactic scene, he tells his opponent, “I sell video games,” which made me think he’s just an employee at GameStop. This tenuous detail allows the filmmakers to set up a showdown between Vaughn and an unctuous resort host over a game of Guitar Hero. Confession time for me: I’m not a big fan of video games. I especially dislike the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, as they encourage vidiots to butcher famous songs and think they’re real musicians by pressing buttons on the neck of a toy guitar. And one of the most boring things I can think of is watching someone else play video games, which is exactly what happens in Couples Retreat, right down to Vaughn whipping his toy guitar around his body like a wannabe Billy Squier. That’s the dramatic climax of the plot, not counting the romantic reconciliations everyone can see coming since the first frame of the film.

The presence of Jason Bateman — so perfectly funny on Arrested Development — can’t save this weak premise and script, nor can the usually hilarious John Michael Higgins, who’s wasted in the role of a marriage counselor. And despite his billing, Jean Reno finds a way to remain charisma-free as the pompous Marcel. Novice director Peter Billingsley — who played air-rifle obsessed Ralphie in A Christmas Story — does a competent, yet uninspiring, job behind the camera.

Back in the mid-1980s, there was a frivolous comedy called Club Paradise, which was basically an excuse for Robin Williams and Harold Ramis to invite Peter O’Toole, Twiggy, and half the cast of SCTV down to the Caribbean for a month or so of filming and frolic. Vaughn and Favreau have done the same thing with Couples Retreat, as if they’re saying to us, “Look at all the fun we had on our trip to French Polynesia!” Next time, guys, just send us a postcard.