Couples Retreat was the second movie I saw in a four movies over four days binge. If you asked me at the start if I thought Couples Retreat was going to be the best of the bunch, I would have laughed. But compared to Remember Me, Greenberg and Bruno, Couples Retreat seems like comedic gold.
I don’t want to go overboard with my praise for Couple Retreat. At best, I could sum up the movie as “meh.” It’s the kind of movie that comes on TBS on a random Sunday afternoon and you keep it on because you’ve got no better options and it’s not that bad. Think of it like Milk Money, but with more bikinis.
Looking at the cover, you might think that Couples Retreat is Forgetting Sarah Marshall for old people. Don’t make that mistake. Sure, both take place at gorgeous, tropical locales and both have Kristen Bell, but Forgetting Sarah Marshall is so much funnier. You would probably enjoy watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall a second time instead of watching Couples Retreat.
I have to hand it to Kristen Bell. That girl is smart when it comes to getting cast. Sure, this movie isn’t all that great, but as an actress she spent most of her time filming this in Hawaii. I’m surprised her other colleagues from Forgetting Sarah Marshall haven’t come to the same conclusion of “must get cast on all Hawaii shoots.” I’m also surprised Bell didn’t do everything she could to get in on the last season of Lost. “Come on, I’ve got sci-fi experience,” she’d say, “I could be your geologist. You don’t need the Tina Fey look-a-like.” But maybe her time in Heroes has caused her to meet so enough con-freaks to scare here away from anything sci-fi, even if it is filmed in paradise.
If you’re a guy and your girlfriend insists on watching Couples Retreat together*, don’t complain too much. You get to watch Kristen Bell, Kristen Davis and Malin Akerman spend most of their time in bikinis. And ladies, you not only get to see a shirtless Jon Favreau, but also a shirtless Faizon Love. Hmm, maybe after reading that last line, your girlfriend won’t insist on watching this movie after all. Fellas, feel free to send me gift cards to movie theaters as tokens of your thanks.
*Note: Watching Couples Retreat wasn’t my girlfriend’s idea.
If you do watch it though, watch the deleted scenes afterwards. Most of the deleted scenes were deleted with good cause and can be skipped, but there’s one that is rather funny and even plays into an unanswered question regarding the plot, namely what happens if the guys ignore the warning about going left on the trail in their quest to get to Eden East. That one deleted scene also more funny homoerotic jokes than all of Bruno.
On its own, Couples Retreat gets a “You’re not missing anything.” Standing next to everything else I watched from Thursday through Sunday, I’m glad Couples Retreat is the movie someone I know owns instead of any of the others.
I was very pleasantly surprised by Couples Retreat, and not just at the amount of Kristen Bell screen time. [also: she looked especially young in this, and not just too-young-to-marry-Teen-Wolf-2; weird.]
I knew they were in it, but I didn’t realize going in that Vince Vaughn & Gutter wrote this. There were definitely moments when I could see that, and it helped. It still didn’t approach Swingers territory, but it made it much better than…well, than what “Couples Retreat” sounds like it would be.
On the AV Club’s “How much was *not* a complete waste of time?” scale, I give it an 80% — not that it was great, just that it kept me amused far more than I expected. In other words: it was Asstastic.