New on DVD: Couples Retreat

Officially, Couples Retreat is all about romantic partners and their efforts to stay together no matter what, with the help of some unconventional counseling on a faraway island. 

But in some ways, the most interesting duo here is Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, two buddies who have co-written and/or co-starred in several films and, in doing so, have moved through several life stages together, often with Vaughn in the lead and Favreau playing back-up: first they were roving bachelors in Swingers, then Vaughn played the single guy who falls in and out of love with his girlfriend in The Break-Up, then they were married brothers in Four Christmases, and now, in Couples Retreat, Vaughn is not only a married man but a devoted father, too. It won't be long before he's warding off a whole new generation of would-be swingers and walking his daughter down the aisle.

Perhaps surprisingly, Vaughn's character, Dave, also happens to be one of the healthiest people around in Couples Retreat, as is Dave's wife Ronnie (Malin Akerman). Their family life may be a little dull, and they may be coasting on autopilot to some degree, but they seem reasonably balanced, and they seem to genuinely care about each other. Their friends, however, are in much rougher shape: Joey (Favreau) and Lucy (Kristin Davis) have both developed wandering eyes and are all too eager to cheat on each other (the trailer is more explicit about the fact that they have been cheating on each other; some of that footage apparently ended up on the cutting-room floor); Shane (Faizon Love) has just come out of a messy divorce and has hooked up with a girl half his age named Trudy (Kali Hawk); and Jason (Jason Bateman) and Cynthia (Kristen Bell) have been so stressed out by their efforts to have a child that they are now on the verge of breaking up.

But not to worry, Jason and Cynthia have a plan: to save their marriage, they will go to an island retreat that provides couples therapy, called Eden West. The only catch is that they can't afford to go unless they pay the group rate and convince all their friends to come with them. Oh, and everyone has to be ready to go in just one week.

This being a movie, everything falls into place very quickly--indeed, too quickly. Some of the character bits here do have the ring of truth: the scene where Dave and Ronnie talk themselves into going on the trip by discussing how they never really had a honeymoon, and how their marriage became overwhelmed by family matters from a very early point, rang true for me, at least. (My wife and I had twins before our first wedding anniversary, and life hasn't slowed down since.) But then the contrivances pile up, as Jason pays them a late-night visit, and the kids wake up and say the sorts of precocious things that children never say anywhere but in the movies, and Jason tells Dave he's so influential among their friends that if he agrees to go on the trip then all of their other friends will tag along too.

And so they do--only to discover, when they get to the island, that the couples-therapy part of the retreat is not optional. So it is not only Jason and Cynthia who have to talk to a counselor and engage in exercises designed to build up their relationship, but everyone else as well. (Yes, this includes Shane and Trudy, even though they have only known each other for a few weeks.) And, surprise, surprise, while the dysfunctional couples vent their frustrations, even the seemingly functional couple--Dave and Ronnie--begins to feel the strain after a rather skeptical therapist (John Michael Higgins) digs into their file.

Somewhere in all of this, there is the potential for a pretty good comedy, but this movie isn't

 it. Perhaps it's because not one of the four couples gets enough story time for us to really care about them, or perhaps it's because the jokes range from the tepid to the obvious. The recurring sense of déjà vu certainly doesn't help: seeing Kristen Bell wrestle with relationship issues on a tropical island cannot help but bring the much funnier Forgetting Sarah Marshall to mind, and seeing Kristin Davis come on to her male masseuse or ogle a naked yoga instructor cannot help but feel like a pale retread of Sex and the City.

To be sure, the film does have a few good lines--like the bit where one of the supervisors calls Monsieur Marcel (Jean Reno), the island's chief therapist, a "couples whisperer"--but nothing that goes beyond a few chuckles. And the film's efforts to make profound comments about trust or healing or whatever just ring false, from the scene where all four couples are told to strip to their underwear and evaluate their partners' bodies as part of a group activity (that'll solve their intimacy issues!), to the inevitable breakup-and-reunion plot mechanics that affect virtually every romantic comedy under the sun.

Suffice it to say that this isn't much of a date movie. Couples just starting out might not want a preview of the bumps in the road ahead; couples that have been together a while and are doing okay might not find much to identify with here; and couples that are going through a bad patch of their own won't find much that helps them here.