Couples Retreat (2009)

O Masterpiece

O Excellent

O Good

O OK

X Mediocre

O Avoid

Review by Jason Pyles / October 9, 2009

Even if you aren’t a film buff, you’re probably already familiar with Peter Billingsley, the debuting director of “Couples Retreat.” He played Ralphie, the boy who wanted a Red Ryder BB gun in “A Christmas Story.” Unfortunately, Billingsley’s first feature-length movie is essentially four bad romantic comedies shoehorned into one.

Dave (Vince Vaughn) and his wife, Ronnie (Malin Akerman), are your typical, busy parents. Their hectic lives and mischievous boys leave them little time for each other. Joey and Lucy (Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis) have been anxiously awaiting their daughter’s departure for college, so they can get a divorce. Shane (Faizon Love) is already divorced but still devastated over losing his wife, so he distracts himself with the companionship of a 20-year-old named Trudy (Kali Hawk).

And Jason and Cynthia (Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell) have had trouble trying to bear a child, which has caused a major rift in their marriage, to the point that they’re also considering a divorce — a plot line that is decidedly not comedic material. When Jason and Cynthia convince their friends to attend an exotic retreat, the eight of them hope for a paradisiacal getaway. But their group vacation has a difficult design of built-in relationship counseling.

It is precisely these counseling sessions (and the reruns of these unpleasant discussions again with their friends) that oddly drag this otherwise brightly colored, picturesque movie into the doldrums of a dull drama. Because “Couples Retreat” is hardly funny — at all — its filmmakers seem to hope that supplying lots of sun-bathed bodies of male and female beauties will sufficiently entertain us.

The movie’s capable cast is an ensemble of generally funny, likable actors who are given little to work with in the way of plot and dialogue. Favreau and Vaughn’s hardships are mostly self-inflicted, however, since they wrote this movie, along with Dana Fox.

Filmmaking requires the hard work of numerous collaborators. I don’t dismiss their efforts lightly. But from a consumer’s standpoint, “Couples Retreat” is an example of apathetic customer service, the cinematic equivalent of a carelessly thrown-together fast food hamburger whose pickles are stacked vertically beneath a bun that’s sliding off in ketchup.

Even though I won’t endorse “Couples Retreat,” there are other movies playing locally that I recommend, such as “Zombieland,” “Surrogates,” “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” “All About Steve” and “Whip It.”

Directed by Peter Billingsley

Vince Vaughn / Jason Bateman / Jon Favreau

Comedy 107 min.

MPAA: PG-13 (on appeal for sexual content and language)