Couples Retreat: Don't Advance


1. Couples Retreat: Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell play a married couple who are having problems, so they decide to go to a (you guessed it!) couples retreat on a tropical island. However, they can't afford it, so they have to convince their friends to come so they can get a group rate. There's a well-adjusted couple (Vince Vaughn and Malin Akerman), a pair of high-school sweethearts who married too young and now hate each other (Jon Favreau and Kristen Davis), and a weeks old rebound relationship (Faison Love and Kali Hawk).

2. If you placed this movie on a graph where CORNY was the x-axis and FUNNY was the y-axis, it would be located in the lower right-hand quadrant. This is not an Apatow-style comedy where gross-out laughs outweigh sentimentality and cuteness.*

3. The only thing that's funny about this movie is Vince Vaughn. He's doing his usual shtick, and, as always, it works. (Incidentally, if you subtracted Vince Vaughn from any of the movies he's been in over the past ten years, they would be totally unbearable). Jason Bateman is just spazzing out the entire time, and Jon Favreau tries some humor with an attempted masturbation scene and an attempted "happy ending" scene. Not hilarious.

4. The plot is basically this: They thought it would be a vacation, but it's really mandatory counseling, and no one is happy about it except for Jason Bateman's character. Jean Reno, Ken Jeong, John Michael Higgins, and Peter Serafinowicz (whom you might know from UK series Spaced and Look Around You) are the uber-serious managers who keep the characters unhappy and ornery throughout, and they're doing typically quality work with less-than-quality writing.

5. Much of the movie is a Guitar Hero commercial. Seriously, it cannot be coincidental. I bet that money was exchanged.

* Of course, I am referring to "Pre-Self-Indulgence Apatow" otherwise known as B.F.P., or "Before Funny People"


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