Couples Retreat
By Rei Nishimoto
Finding the humorous side of relationships between people and how they work on it comes in an assortment of ways. Couples therapy is the latest wave of how couples attempt to work on improving their relationships, and the funny can often be found.
Couples Retreat looks at four couples who are all encountering problems. Jason (Jason Bateman) and Cynthia (Kristen Bell) are one couple who are overly happy except they do a superb job at masking their own problems. As a way to save them from divorce, they choose to take a vacation to a tropical resort in the South Pacific designed to help couples through therapy.
They enlist their other couple friends - the child raising Dave (Vince Vaughn) and Ronnie (Malin Akerman), the loveless yet married Joey (Jon Favreau) and Lucy (Kristin Davis), and the newly divorced Shane (Faison Love) and his new much younger girlfriend Trudi (Kali Hawk) - Jason and Cynthia are short on cash and enlist under a group rate. They give the couples a fancy slideshow about the resort, and they are thinking they are about to go have fun. This is where they quickly learn the other couples are about to have their relationships under a microscope like Jason and Cynthia.
They are met by Schtanley (Peter Serafinowicz), the British resort manager who is overseeing their stay. His blunt yet snobbish personality quickly interacts well with the four couples, where brief conflicts over what they expected from the resort and what was about to happen in the story build up naturally.
Another key person in the film in Marcel (Jean Reno), a Zen style therapist and founder of the resort. His methods of trying to work with the couples clashes with their lifestyles and causes tension to each of the couples. His unorthodox methods, such as having the couples disrobe on the beach to swimming in shark-infested waters, is the beginning of many laughs throughout the film.
Each of the couples never dominate throughout the film and compliment each other very well. Jason and Cynthia want others to think they have the perfect marriage except they try to hide their problems from the world. Dave and Ronnie are the couple who are only looking to spend some time away from their two young boys. They also are viewed by the others to have the good life, except they cannot see that. Joey and Lucy are the couple who are too busy seeking other singles on the resort and are too blinded to realize what they have. Plus Shane is trying to impress Trudi by overdoing things.
Part of their resort stay includes sessions with a couple's therapist (played by Ken Jeong, Amy Hill, John Michael Higgins, and Karen David). Each couple has their relationships examined closely, which creates tension for most of them. Their interactions with the therapists expose each of their vulnerabilities, but also creating problems that did not exist before.
Each of them discover each other's troubles, as Shane briefly loses Trudi over a fight and runs off to the single's resort. The rest of the group attempts to help Shane by going across the waters to the resort. During that moment, Cynthia breaks down and tells them about her secret. Joey's wandering eyes leads him towards younger singles he met when they arrived, and Lucy is impressed by the attractive yet flirtatious yoga instructor Salvatore (Carlos Ponce). But throughout their wild adventure, Shane finds what he was looking for, as well as the other three couples in their own wild ways.
This movie is not quite the comedy of the year, but the story is relatable enough for viewers to enjoy and find a few laughs along the way. There is a humorous side to this entire story without getting too ridiculous and becoming distasteful. Couples Retreat is enjoyable from beginning to end, and rarely has a dull moment.
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