Movie Review - Couples Retreat

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Allow me coin a phrase: Cannonball Run Syndrome.  CRS is when the actors in a film are having more fun than the people watching it.  Now, it’s not always a bad thing.  Cannonball Run is silly, mindless fun but, while it’s true that actors were having more fun than the audience, that’s not to say that the audience was having no fun at all.  In fact, the fun the actors were having was contagious and elevated the overall quality of the film.  But, more often than not, it’s generally to the detriment of a film.  Those instances I like to classify as Cannonball Run II Syndrome.  Which brings us to Couples Retreat.  There are two things to look for when attempting to discern if a film is afflicted with CRS.  1) The actors are all already friends (“Cool!  We get paid to hang out!”) Or 2) the film takes place in an exotic local (“Cool!  We get a paid vacation!”).  Couples Retreat *gulp* has both. 

Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell play Jason and Cynthia, an overly officious couple whose unsuccessful attempts at getting pregnant has removed any and all attempts at marital spontaneity.  In an effort to save their marriage, they’ve booked a trip to “Eden”, an all-inclusive, tropical getaway that doubles as “new-agey” marital counseling.  Since the resort is pricey, they convince/bully their friends to go along in order to qualify for a group rate.  Their friends consist of the super-busy but essentially functional Dave & Ronnie (Vince Vaughn/Malin Akerman), the “divorced in spirit if not the law” Joey & Lucy (Jon Favreau/Kristin Davis) and the recently divorced Shane (Faizon Love) and his college-age rebound-girlfriend Trudy (Kali Hawk). 

The movie thankfully (I think) wastes little time establishing its premise in the first act; making short-order of whisking our stars off to their island paradise (filmed on location in Bora Bora).  Dealing with four couples means that we don’t get a plot as much as we get a collection of subplots.  But being that this is first and foremost a comedy (allegedly), it barely even has time for subplots.  The film is more akin to a compilation of sketches all of which have the same punch line: men don’t like marriage counseling. 

Don’t take that to mean the film doesn’t have funny moments.  You’d be pretty hard pressed to give Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau two hours of your life and not laugh at some point.  They’re both playing the characters you’ve come to expect; Vaughn with his rapid-fire, stream-of-consciousness patter and Favreau with his short-tempered overreactions.  Unfortunately, the film spends too much time going for the easy laugh.  It’s a beautiful local and the actors work well together.  Ultimately your enjoyment level will be wholly dependant on how fun you find it to watch someone else having fun.  It’s not that movie is atrocious, it’s just that you can’t help but wish that Vaughn and Favreau could have done for married life the same thing they did in Swingers for single life. 

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being Cannonball Run and 1 being Cannonball Run II, Couples Retreat gets a 5.

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