Last week, I wrote a little about the reasons someone would decide to become a filmmaker. On one hand, they have a passion for it and their first project is a labor of love that clearly has something to say. On the other hand, they just feel like it is the right thing to do in their career, and they make the jump from actor/writer/cinematographer/etc. up to the director’s chair. There was a third reason out there that I wasn’t thinking about, and it didn’t hit me until I was reflecting on the new comedy, COUPLES RETREAT. The third reason someone might become a filmmaker is that their friends have a screenplay that “needs” to get done, and they turn to you to fill the director’s role. Whatever lack of vision comes with the second of these three reasons is certainly made even more clear when looking at this third reason, particularly in the case of Peter Billingsley and COUPLES RETREAT, a flat tire of a comedy that clunks along to its inevitable outcome and that only piques your funny bone interest one or two times.
Starring an ensemble cast, COUPLES RETREAT features four couples made up of Vince Vaughn & Malin Akerman, Jason Bateman & Kristen Bell, Jon Favreau & Kristin Davis, and Faizon Love & Kali Hawk. The couple made of Bateman & Bell feel that they are slowly headed towards divorce, and, as such, they decide to book reservations on a tropical island. But this isn’t exactly Fantasy Island. Instead of jet skiing and parasailing, they spend their mornings in couple’s therapy, talking about their feelings towards one another. The other three couples, needless to say, tag along out of A) solidarity for their struggling friends and B) under the ruse that the therapy sessions are optional. They aren’t, and, before you know it, all four couples are forced into working on their relationships within themselves. Lots of screaming and hilarity ensue.
The most prominent issue that is keeping COUPLES RETREAT from succeeding as a comedy is its pace. In the first half of the film, literally every scene seems saddlebagged with about three or four minutes of unnecessary back-and-forth between the characters. Most of these scenes get to the heart of it pretty quickly. We get that Favreau and Davis are each looking to cheat on their spouse, and, in all likelihood, they have done just that. We get that Vaughn and Akerman are just plodding along, much like this film, getting by as best as they can without any real happiness. We understand that Love’s wife left him and he is rebounding with Hawk, a girl who is 20 years younger than he. We catch all of this very early on, but these points become hammered into our heads. Before long, we just want the film to make us laugh rather than feeding us all this meaningless exposition on every character.
This problem rests squarely on the shoulders of Billingsley’s lack of experience as a director in the editing room. It’s not as if the film’s editor, Dan Lebintal, is a poor editor. He’s done excellent work with Favreau in the director’s seat with ‘Elf,’ ‘Zathura,’ and ‘Iron Man.’ Unfortunately, here, he just doesn’t know what to trim, and that is probably because he had no one telling him what to trim. The film runs nearly two hours in length, and, easily, 20 minutes of that could have been cut without notice.
The actors involved try their best to get the funny train rolling. Vaughn screams his way through scenes revolving around sharks, yoga, and Guitar Hero, the only three scenes that really bring out the belly laughs. Favreau works his charm as the adulterous jerk. Love is, no pun intended, lovable, but his character is given short-thrift when it comes to the out-and-out funny moments. Bateman, and Bell, for that matter, is given a pretty thankless role. Though it’s not something he is a stranger to, he doesn’t seem to be behind it here, and it shows. Akerman tries her hardest to be the cutest out of the group, and she ends up being the closest to a “straight man” in the entirety of the film. Davis has moments here and there, but nothing that just cries out for her to be noticed. Hawk plays really the only annoying character in the whole film, and she does so with absolute bravado.
The secondary actors pull their parts off well, also. Jean Reno as the resort’s manager is as funny as his pony tail allows him to be. Carlos Ponce as the yoga instructor helps make that scene one of the funniest and most memorable. Peter Serafinowicz plays Sctanley (pronounced Stanley), the resort’s host, with a huffy wit. John Michael Higgins and Ken Jeong play therapists, and show up just long enough for the crowd to react to the fact that John Michael Higgins and Ken Jeong are in this movie.
It’s a shame when you observe a film like COUPLES RETREAT, a comedy that has so much going for it but that doesn’t seem to put anything in its arsenal to good use. With a cast like this, and a premise that practically writes its own bits of comedy, the film should have been so much more. In fact, it should have done so much more with so much less, as it seems to be piled high with pointless scenes and staggering moments of blandness. While there are certain jokes throughout that hit, and some of them hit pretty hard, a majority of them miss completely. You would think watching Vaughn, Bateman, and Favreau having a lousy time in Tahiti would be a laugh-riot, and, in the hands of a more experienced director, you’d probably be right. COUPLES RETREAT doesn’t do that, and, instead, we have a vibrant look at a whole lot of funny people doing a whole lot of unfunny things.
