A Comedy to 'Retreat' From

by Brett Parker

Couples Retreat is a comedy starring one of the funniest comedic actors working today with a script written by the creative forces behind Swingers and Iron Man. That everything goes so spectacularly wrong is rather jarring. I didn’t think it was possible for Vince Vaughn and his posse to make a comedy worse than Four Christmases, but they’ve really outdone themselves this time. This could be the worst work of everyone involved.

As the film opens, we meet a set of four couples who each have their own set of problems. Dave (Vince Vaughn) and Ronnie (Malin Akerman) have let the daily concerns of suburban family life get in the way of one-on-one time. Joey (Jon Favreau) and Lucy (Kristin Davis) have lost whatever physical spark they used to contain and barely acknowledge each other. Shane (Faizon Love) tries to rebound from a hurtful divorce by dating a 20-year-old bimbo named Trudy (Kali Hawk). Jason (Jason Bateman) and Cynthia (Kristen Bell) have trouble conceiving a child and feel their picture-perfect marriage crumbling. Being the perfectionists that they are, Jason and Cynthia wish to visit a tropical resort named Eden that helps troubled couples repair their relationships through the nurturing of an exotic location. They convince the other couples to join them on this vacation, for if they all go they get a great group discount.

The couples are soon whisked away to this island paradise and the place truly has a breathtaking appearance, with gorgeous beaches and island delights. The couples feel like they’re in paradise, that is until the couples’ skill-building activities begin and all smiles turn to deep frowns. Under the supervision of the French guru Marcel (Jean Reno), the couples participate in a relationship workshop that consists of group therapy, deep sea fishing, stripping, and risqué yoga. Instead of helping with their problems, these activities produce results that veer somewhere between embarrassment and frustration. It seems that these activities are causing the couples to crack beyond repair. Can the passions that were once there possibly be rekindled on this island?

To call Couples Retreat a lowbrow sitcom would be an insult to lowbrow sitcoms everywhere. The jokes are so flat and dead-on-arrival that it’s excruciating to sit through. The sight gags are extremely weak and go on much longer than absolutely necessary. Vaughn and Favreau, who co-wrote the screenplay with Dana Fox (What Happens in Vegas), usually have a strong gift for golden one-liners, but this time they give us nothing that stands out or is worth remembering. The dialogue curiously has a repetitive habit, over-establishing points that we’ve long since understood. Even Vaughn’s star presence, which is usually a haven of hilarious monologues and priceless comic energy, is mundane and ineffective this time. The only two moments I honestly enjoyed were a conversation about Applebee’s and a Guitar Hero competition between Dave and an island tour guide (Peter Serafinowicz).

Thirteen years ago, Vaughn and Favreau teamed up to brings us Swingers, one of the great comedies about the masculine mind. Under the slick indie eye of director Doug Liman, Favreau’s script and Vaughn’s comic antics gave us honest and hilarious insights into contemporary dating and male comradery in a way that no assembly-line Hollywood comedy could dream of doing. Swingers is a cult classic that is cherished not just for its invaluable humor but for illuminating masculine experiences in a way any guy can relate to. Couples Retreat is proof that Vaughn and Favreau have sold out to the big mean commercial machine, and it’s not a pretty sight. To start off with an indie film of fun-loving honesty and end up with a Hollywood comedy of shameless phoniness is truly heartbreaking. This duo should return to their gloves-off indie style of filmmaking, then maybe they could make a comedy that’s truly worth relishing.

As a producer, Vaughn has the right goals in mind but displays clunky and misguided executions of them. It appears that Vaughn wants to produce comedies that focus on the peculiarities of contemporary relationships in everyday situations. The only problem is that these comedies favor a formulaic, sitcom style as opposed to displays of bruising honesty. It’s not hard to see how The Break-Up, Four Christmases, or Couples Retreat wants to focus on the plights of normal people in the present and their relationships, but these films feel too silly and unrealistic to be relatable. If these films’ jokes were more observant and down-to-earth, it would truly be more involving. A comedy like (500) Days of Summer, for example, works so wonderfully because each and every one of its jokes are firmly rooted in honest observations of dating and breaking-up. If Couples Retreat treated its characters like real people and steered the humor away from sitcom territory towards true human behavior, it would’ve been spared from looking like commercial trash.

I can’t remember the last time I was so bored during a movie. I don’t mean having to sit through a bad movie, but being truly bored. Yawning. Constantly checking my watch. Waiting eagerly to go home. Almost frustrated for having blown ten bucks on such a waste of a movie. I’m usually such a big fan of Vince Vaughn’s works and I root for him all the time, but this is such an all-time low for him and his comrades. Watching Swingers and Made reminds me of the old days I yearn for and what I wish would happen again these days.