Tag Archives: Couples Retreat

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On The Couch #51: The Proposal

After gorging myself silly on Christmas deserts on the 25th, I returned home, plopped down on the couch and realized I had just enough energy to pick a movie on Netflix Instant Streaming. I wanted to watch something light-hearted because it was Christmas. After browsing Netflix’s choices for far too long, I think I was at the 25 minute mark before I picked  something, I settled on Amy Adams in Sunshine Cleaning.
An Amy Adams comedy is the textbook definition of something light-hearted, right? Two minutes into Sunshine Cleaning a guy shoots himself in the face with a gun. There goes my Amy Adams theory. Back to the drawing board, er I mean back to the instant streaming queue.
I almost saw The Proposal during the great Red Box experiment of August in Cape Cod. I think I saw When in Rome instead. I should have rented The Proposal. It’s much better than When in Rome.
I gave The Proposal an “I liked it” rating on Netflix. The ending cost me rating it “I really liked it.”  I thought the ending was completely ridiculous. The whole movie set up that Ryan Reynolds should have ended up with his non-psycho ex-girlfriend, Vince Vaughn’s wife from Couples Retreat, not his completely psycho boss. But once Sandra Bullock skips town, Ryan Reynolds and Betty White announce that Ryan Reynolds now loves Sandra Bullock, so it must be true, the previous hour and a half of The Proposal be damned! The one redeeming quality of the ending is that it provided the opportunity for the INS interviews that take place during the credits, which were some of the funniest parts of The Proposal.
The Office’s Oscar Nunez has the best scenes in The Proposal. He seems to be the only person employed in this small Alaskan town, pulling quadruple duty as a caterer, male stripper, general store proprietor and ordained minister. His unshaven stripper dance will haunt you.
It was weird watching a movie where Sandra Bullock isn’t playing the cute girl next door type. Seeing her play someone as cold as her character in The Proposal was really jarring, but she did a great job with it.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Proposal. It’s not perfect, but it’s good. I recommend watching it the next time you’re stuck on the couch in a food coma.
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On The Couch #15: Bruno

Wow, this has been a really bad weekend for me and movies. Four days straight of watching movies, and the best of the bunch is Couple Retreat. Couples Retreat! I could not have predicted this going into the weekend. If you check the rankings to the left, you’ll see that the bottom movie on bost lists came from the past four days.

If you judge a comedy based on how much you laugh, then Bruno is definitely a failure. I was shocked, and I mean shocked, by how unfunny the movie was based on how hilarious I thought the Borat movie was the first time I saw it. Is Sacha Baron Cohen resting on his laurels? Did he phone this one in?

Like Borat, the best comedy in this movie comes when Cohen, in his Bruno character, interacts with people who don’t know they’re being put-on. Bruno goes on a daytime talk show with an entirely African-American audience, and plays show-and-tell with the African baby he traded for a limited edition iPod. Bruno interviews Paula Abdul (and in the deleted scenes, Pete Rose and LaToya Jackson) using Mexican gardeners for chairs. He even hosts an anti-gay rally full of rednecks that turns into a man-on-man sex show. But that’s maybe 12 minutes of good content in this hour and 21 minute movie.

One of the few funny scenes in Bruno.

Unfortunately, Cohen goes for more of the shock value comedy that made for a very funny scene in Borat, but largely falls flat here. In the naked wrestling scene in Borat, I thought a lot of the comedy came from the extremely large black rectangle they used to blot out Borat’s penis. Since the movie was “made” by Borat, it came across as the fictional host running wild with his ego. Cohen saw the laughs generated by that scene though and decided to fill Bruno with numerous scenes of male genitalia and the extremes of homosexual sex, some involving Rube Goldberg-like machines. It comes across as filler though, and didn’t generate more than a few laughs from me. It’s very awkward and off-putting to watch a comedy and not hear any laughter.

The Blu-ray is packed with bonus content. There are over 40 minutes of deleted scenes. Some of the scenes are more boring and monotonous than what made it into the movie, but some are funnier than the final package. Why not include both the Pete Rose and LaToya Jackson interviews. Both showed how out of touch celebrities, even minor ones like Jackson can be. Both were more than content with sitting on bent over Mexicans as chairs, with Rose even moving one into position. LaToya Jackson was even willing to eat sushi off the body of naked Mexican gardener; she only balked once Bruno took her brother Michael’s number from her phone.

Another shining spot in the deleted scenes was Bruno’s attempt to bring about peace in the Middle East by talking to representatives from Israel and Palestine. In it, he confuses hummus and Hamas, which I thought was one of the funniest things on the disc, but after watching the hour and 21 minute movie followed by 40 minutes of deleted scenes, maybe my expectations were lowered.

If you liked Borat and you still haven’t seen Bruno, I’m guessing that like me before this weekend, you’re going to ignore any warnings about the low quality of the movie and see it anyway. But really, you’re better off without it. Don’t want to see Borat again? Watch Couples Retreat instead. At least there you’ll get a few more funnier jokes and see Kristen Davis in her underwear.
In Couples Retreat vs. Bruno, Couples Retreat wins.
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On The Couch #14: Couples Retreat

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.

This picture of Kristen Bell is here mainly to keep frequent commenter Bryan coming back to the blog.

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.

The three reasons to watch Couples Retreat.

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.

WARNING: Watching Couples Retreat will result in seeing Faizon Love shirtless!

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.

This Guitar Hero battle is reason #4 to watch Couples Retreat.

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.