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Movie Review: Couples Retreat ( *1/2 )

AHN — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:00:53 +0000

The slogan that belongs on any T-shirt connected with Couples Retreat should read: “My cast and crew went to paradise and all they brought me back was this terrible comedy.”

Sitting through this dashed-off destination date-flick romp, it’s we who want to retreat.

Couples Retreat kicks off with marrieds Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell announcing to their friends that they are headed for divorce after eight seemingly happy years together. Their inability to have children has been a critical issue for them, so they’ve decided to go to the luxurious Eden Resort, on a tropical island in the South Pacific, to take advantage of the therapy sessions available there in an attempt to save their marriage.

Bateman guilt-trips his suburban Chicago buddies into accompanying him along with their significant others so they can get a reduced price. But it turns out that the couples therapy sessions offered as part of the group-rate vacation package are not optional, so all four couples have to participate. This comes as a blow because the others have come along assuming they’d just be swimming and water-skiing and snorkeling and dining and relaxing.

Not exactly. They’re booked into Eden West, which is exclusively for committed couples. As opposed to Eden East, which is for swinging singles, and which some of them watch longingly across the water.

That’s when three of the four couples at this seemingly paradiasical Bora getaway want to retreat. Too late. The New Age “couples whisperer” played by Jean Reno already has them in his clutches.

Vince Vaughn and Malin Ackerman are Dave and Ronnie, the central married couple and the busy parents of two young sons. Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis are Joey and Lucy, a married couple not so much estranged as alienated. And Faison Love and Kali Hawk are Shane and Trudy, he a recent divorcee, she a much younger woman he has just met and invited along.

The choppy and sloppy screenplay by producer Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, and Dana Fox takes forever to unfurl its convoluted premise, and then keeps introducing subplots and character back-stories that it has no intention of exploring in any way.

There’s room for raunch, slapstick, and raunchy slapstick within a PG-13-rated context, but legitimate laughs are in very short supply. That’s because everything is half-baked, as if the writers just ran with the first ideas that popped into their heads.

Nothing feels authentic, logical, or credible: not the marriages, not the therapy sessions, not the idiotic PowerPoint presentation that reels them all in, not even the leisurely resort activities.

Debuting director Peter Billingsley (whom you might remember as a child actor, playing protagonist Ralphie in the popular 1983 holiday perennial, A Christmas Story, and who has been a producer in recent years) doesn’t have much of a story to tell. So his film goes nowhere fast.

But he makes things worse by getting nothing from his cast, several of whom (Davis, Bell, Hawk) are embarrassingly inept in making an impression or creating a three-dimensional character. Even accomplished performers Vaughn, Bateman, and Reno come off badly. Of course, the atrocious screenplay doesn’t do them any favors.

Vaughn, wearing several behind-the-scenes hats, plays a more grown-up version of his signature character and does manage to get a few chuckles with his on-screen specialty: the machine-gun-dialogue tirade. But there’s not much else here that will reward your patience.

The disappointing doodle, Couples Retreat, is no vacation, vicarious or otherwise.

Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic/ AHN

107 minutes

In theaters October 9, 2009

Rating: PG-13, Comedy

Vince Vaughn’s Yoga Theory

Bang — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:50:59 +0000

Vince Vaughn thinks men become yoga instructors so they can “dry-hump” women.

The ‘Couples Retreat’ actor was horrified when he went to a class and saw the “creepy” instructor draping himself all over his unsuspecting students.

The 39-year-old star said, “I had a girlfriend in Los Angeles who took me to a yoga class. While it was going on I was saying to myself, ‘Is this really happening?’

“It was like the instructor was making all these moves and he was basically dry humping the girls. Nobody batted an eye. I felt like I was in ‘The Twilight Zone’.”

Vince, who is currently engaged to Canadian real estate agent Kyla Weber, also revealed what he looks for in a girlfriend, saying he likes someone who can make him laugh.

He added to Parade.com, “Friendship is the biggest thing for me, and also a sense of humour. I like someone that can make me laugh. I like to laugh at stuff, especially myself.

“Life is always peaks and valleys, there’s going to be good times and bad times. So the biggest thing, for me, is having someone that makes you laugh and that you trust.”

Vince Vaughn Kyla Weber Engaged

Duncan Riley — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:23:16 +0000

Wedding crashers star Vince Vaughn is engaged to 29 year old Canadian real estate agent Kyla Weber.

The father of the soon to be bride, Ken Weber confirmed the news to the Canadian media.

Earlier reports said that Vaughn had dropped to one knee and presented her a $125,000, four-carat ring on Weber on Valentine’s Day.

Details on Kyla Weber are sketchy, with reports saying she is originally from Okotoks, just outside of Calgary, and met Vaughn either while vacationing in Venice Beach, California, or in Italy. Weber has lived in Los Angeles for some time.

Vaughn previously dated Jennifer Aniston.

Four Christmases Trailer

Duncan Riley — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 02:21:22 +0000

Four Christmases, the new Reese Witherspoon, Vince Vaughn Christmas comedy is out today (November 26).

Witherspoon and Vaughn play a San Francisco couple pressured into visiting all four of their divorced parents’ homes on Christmas Day. Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen, Kristin Chenoweth, Jon Voight, Jon Favreau and Robert Duvall co-star.

The movie hasn’t received great reviews, with The Hollywood Reporter calling the Four Christmases Movie “one of the most joyless Christmas movies ever” with “an unearned feel-good ending [that] adds insult to injury” and a script that “situates Hollywood clichés about Southern rednecks”

Strangely the title of the movie for release in Australia is Four Holidays. I thought the Holiday PC thing was American.

Four Christmases Trailer as follows: