Couples Retreat: Movie Review (2009)

Movie Review
Couples Retreat

Directed by Peter Billingsley, written by Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau and Dana Fox, 105 minutes, rated PG-13.

The new Peter Billingsley movie, “Couples Retreat,” is a comedy about avoiding divorce. In its sights are Jason (Jason Bateman) and Cynthia (Kristen Bell), two miserable, boring shills with energy to spare, but for reasons not worth exploring here, can’t conceive a child. And so, you know, they kind of hate each other for it.

Isn’t that funny? It gets better.

Fueling the laughs even harder are the six people duped by Jason and Cynthia to join them on an island getaway.

The idea they present to their friends — two couples nearing divorce, one couple whose male counterpart recently divorced and now is dating a slinky young woman years younger than himself (she could be his child) — is the opportunity to relax in a tropical clime. Trouble is, when they get there, all find out what’s going down — they’ve been tricked into couples counseling. And really, what’s funnier than couples counseling?

In the right hands — say, Woody Allen’s — the answer would have been “plenty.” But here, it’s a resounding “zip!”

Billingsley, who once played Ralphie in 1983’s “A Christmas Story,” should have picked up that old BB gun of his and blown the hell out of the script before he ever signed on to make a movie out of it.

About that script. It hails from Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau and Dana Fox, it’s riddled with cliches, and so what Billingsley mines from it is just what you’d expect — a movie cramped with them. That’s a disappointment, not only because of the film’s sorry lack of laughs, but also because it squanders the potential of its premise, not to mention the talent driving it.

Beyond Bateman, who has been on a roll lately, the movie stars Vaughn as Dave, Kristin Davis as Lucy, Jean Reno as the ditzy putz behind this tropical throwdown, Favreau as Joey, Malin Akerman as Ronnie and Faizon Love as Shane. Given the right roles, every one of these actors has proved they can sustain laughter. But here? At my screening, the audience might as well have been extras in a silent movie.

Grade: D+