The slogan that belongs on any t-shirt connected with Couples Retreat should read: "My cast and crew went to paradise and all they brought me back was this terrible comedy."
Sitting through this dashed-off destination date-flick romp, it's we who want to retreat.
Couples Retreat kicks off with marrieds Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell announcing to their friends that they are headed for divorce after eight seemingly happy years together. Their inability to have children has been a critical issue for them, so they've decided to go to the luxurious Eden Resort, on a tropical island in the South Pacific, to take advantage of the therapy sessions available there in an attempt to save their marriage.
Bateman guilt-trips his suburban Chicago buddies into accompanying him along with their significant others so they can get a reduced price. But it turns out that the couples' therapy sessions offered as part of the group-rate vacation package are not optional, so all four couples have to participate.
This comes as a blow because the others have come along assuming they'd just be swimming and water-skiing and snorkeling and dining and relaxing.
Not exactly. They're booked into Eden West, which is exclusively for committed couples. As opposed to Eden East, which is for swinging singles, and which some of them watch longingly across the water.
That's when three of the four couples at this seemingly paradisaical Bora Bora getaway want to retreat. Too late. The New Age "couples whisperer" played by Jean Reno already has them in his clutches.
Vince Vaughn and Malin Ackerman are Dave and Ronnie, the central married couple and the busy parents of two young sons. Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis are Joey and Lucy, a married couple not so much estranged as alienated. And Faison Love and Kali Hawk are Shane and Trudy, he a recent divorcé, she a much younger woman he has just met and invited along.
The choppy and sloppy screenplay by producer Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, and Dana Fox takes forever to unfurl its convoluted premise, and then keeps introducing subplots and character backstories that it has no intention of exploring in any way.
There's room for raunch, slapstick, and raunchy slapstick within a PG-13-rated context, but legitimate laughs are in very short supply. That's because everything is half-baked, as if the writers just ran with the first ideas that popped into their heads.
Nothing feels authentic, logical, or credible: not the marriages, not the therapy sessions, not the idiotic Powerpoint presentation that reels them all in, not even the leisurely resort activities.
Debuting director Peter Billingsley (whom you might remember as a child actor, playing protagonist Ralphie in the popular 1983 holiday perennial A Christmas Story, and who has been a producer in recent years) doesn't have much of a story to tell. So his film goes nowhere fast.
But he makes things worse by getting nothing from his cast, several of whom (Davis, Bell, Hawk) are embarrassingly inept in making an impression or creating a three-dimensional character. Even accomplished performers Vaughn, Bateman, and Reno come off badly.
Of course, the atrocious screenplay doesn't do them any favors.
Vaughn, wearing several behind-the-scenes hats, plays a more grown-up version of his signature character and does manage to get a few chuckles with his on-screen specialty: the machine-gun-dialogue tirade. But there's not much else here that will reward your patience.
So we'll resort to 1½ stars out of 4 for the disappointing doodle, Couples Retreat. It's no vacation, vicarious or otherwise.
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Bateman guilt-trips his suburban Chicago buddies into accompanying him along with their significant others so they can get a reduced price. But it turns out that the couples' therapy sessions offered as part of the group-rate vacation package are not optional, so all four couples have to participate.
