MOVIE REVIEW: COUPLES RETREAT

COUPLES RETREAT

Four of Seven Cows

Couples Retreat, starring co-writers Vince Vaughn and John Favreau, has been roundly panned by critics. Well, I’m a critic, and I’ve got to wonder just what they expected. This is a romantic comedy, after-all, not a genre likely to produce the next Citizen Kane. Most movie-goers buy their tickets with the expectation of some dumb fun, nothing more. Good then that Couples Retreat is dumb fun, and nothing more.

             
Stars Vince Vaughn and John Favreau co-wrote the script for Couples Retreat, and it’s good enough. Romantic comedies are not brain surgery, as the premise of this one attests. Four couples go to a vacation resort dedicated to relationship-building. The thought that such a place even exists is funny to me, but then that might explain why I’m not in a relationship. The ensuing fun only scores about a five on the laugh meter, but there are lots of girls in bikinis, so that’s something.

            
 One does get the feeling the writers and/or director of Couples Retreat struggled with just what sort of movie was being made. There are scenes that go nowhere, scenes that often leave the impression that there was something cruder hiding just around the corner that was left on the cutting room floor. Well, hurray for the cutting room floor, as I for one am sick to death of “comedies” that seem to be in an ever-escalating competition for crudity.

             
Still, just beneath the surface in Couples Retreat is a heart – well, Hollywood’s version of a heart, anyhow. Ultimately, love and fidelity are affirmed, and virtue is not mocked to any great degree. It’s rather sad that this is not the norm, but such is the state of popular culture.

             
This is not to say this is a movie for the kiddies. By today’s standards for low-brow humor Couples Retreat is pretty tame, but it’s still a movie best suited to adults. There’s language and adult situations that parents may not appreciate, not to mention kids would be bored stiff.

           
What we’re left with, then, is a rather by-the-numbers sort of comedy that neither offends nor entertains to any great degree. If your date can’t be talked into the infinitely superior Zombieland, and the poster for Love Happens rightly spooks you with its apparent gushiness, Couples Retreat can be counted on for at least a couple chuckles. I think we call that “average,” and I give average four cows.