The movie starts with a witty premise; four couples are friends and are experiencing unique and separate relationship problems. Vince Vaughn and Malin Akerman (27 Dresses) form the first couple. They are married with two children and ostensibly few problems other than marital monotony. They are both hard working and successful. Why they would be coerced by Jason Bateman and his wife Kristen Bell (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) into flying around the world for an island paradise retreat is still a mystery. People leave their children with a senile grandparent for weeks on end on a mere whim? Sign me up for that life, I want to live stylishly.
Bateman and Bell are bored with their marriage and lame routines. That seems more par for the course. Bell has demonstrated time and again her believability in the role of prudish little bitch who hates being attached and who finds commitment disposable and deplorable. She is as un-amiable a character as one can conjure. Jon Favreau is mysteriously dating Kristin Davis (Charlotte from Sex and the City). They married after a prom night accident, oops! Usually she looks average and has a viciously annoying personality; it is apparently symptomatic only of her SITC character and not her real life persona. In this film she looks thinner, has much more lustrous hair and plays a sexier role than ever before. Their trouble stems from their inability to sustain a romance for twenty or more years, who can? Finally, to add "diverse" humour Faizon Love is dating a twenty year old hottie who unwittingly agrees to venture thousands of miles away on the trip with the promise of an obstreperous rockin’ rollin’ good time. What they all find is a horrible couples’ seminar that nearly destroys the fabric of everyone’s relationships.
The island is beautiful, the men are hideous, and the extra characters (even Jean Reno) are vexatious and frankly deserve to be discarded into a barren wasteland. I watched this movie to laugh. The actors are all comedians. The script is written by comics. Yet, somehow there are 0.0 laughs in this movie. It is fit for someone who has no sense of humour and who thinks jokes are immature or stupid. Ladies and gentlemen I love jokes. Without them a comedy film might as well be an after school special. I wasted time and money here as I would never watch this movie at the theater or on DVD had I been exposed to a little more of a preview. It never heats up. The action never starts. The writers pretend that jokes are the least important element of a comedy film. The quality moments that most films possess are as absent as a D- student from prep school. Think of any negative word and attach it to Couples Retreat. Jason Bateman shined in Extract. The progress he made as a comedian may as well have never happened. D- at best, F in reality. Dismissed.
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