Rating of
2/4
Not As Good As The Previews
MovieMike - wrote on 12/22/11
‘Ah-ha!’ I thought, finally a decent date movie for my better half and myself. Having done a Caribbean cruise ourselves earlier this year, I figured we would not only enjoy the promised laughs (previews have a way of setting our expectations, don’t they?), but the beautiful island scenery as well. ‘Couples Retreat’ is a humorous take on the practice of marriage encounter sessions set in a beautiful island paradise. Cynthia (Kristen Bell) and Jason (Jason Bateman) play a married couple that have failed at procreation and feel their marriage is falling apart because of it. They learn of a group encounter session being offered at the aforementioned tropical island. To take advantage of the special rate, they have to cajole three other couples (including Vince Vaughn) into signing on for the trip as well. Once on the island, all of the respective spouses slowly reveal their own inadequacies and frustrations but continue to fight the suggestion that they could all use some couples therapy.
Director Peter Billingsley helms this film and unfortunately for us, his resume is pretty thin. As a matter of fact, this is his only full-length feature film directorial experience, and it shows. The pacing is really off as the movie spends way too much time just getting everyone to agree to the trip (duh, we already know that they all go!) Another annoyance is that this film is really too ‘talky’ – instead of having the characters reveal their various foibles through their actions, we have to sit through seemingly endless dialog and listen to bickering and whining that isn’t always so funny.
While I did find myself laughing out loud a few times and the Mrs. claimed to enjoy it as well, I felt like there were a lot of unexplored topics and situations that would have made this film a lot more relevant and could have added to the laughs. ‘Couples Retreat’ is still a fun movie and quite suitable as date-night material, it’s just not quite romantic comedy paradise.
