Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

Couples Retreat is listed as a comedy.  But it's not particularly funny. Sure there are a few amusing moments, but it's actually a fairly quiet, calm movie examining a fairly serious topic - that of marriage, and the work it takes to keep it going.

In a horrible premise, three couples are pressured to joining a fourth couple on a week's vacation in the tropics.  I say it's a horrible premise because I don't know any three couples that would or could make an impulsive decision to do such a thing, even if it is at half-price, and presented as a favor to the fourth couple.  But they had to get these four couples together somehow, so that's the scenario presented.

Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell are considering divorce.  This trip, which they will use as an excuse to attend couples therapy together, is their final chance.  The other three couples are Vince Vaughn and Malin Akerman who seem content, if not overly happy in their marriage.  She describes it as "we work through it pretty well" or something along that line.  Meaning they manage to tough it out.  Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis are at the point where they're just hanging in for the sake of their kid.  They don't even seem to like each other anymore, having already tossed the marriage, if not legally, then in their minds.  And finally you have Faizon Love, a divorced man in a new relationship with a 20 year old, and about to learn that you can't always go back to the ‘good old days'.

The big kicker comes when the four couples arrive at the tropical paradise only to realize that couples therapy is a big part of the agenda for the week.  And it's NOT optional. 

That's the story in a nutshell.  The rest of the movie shows a lot of the therapy - some "new age" couple-building-skills.  None of it made much sense to me.  Like why did they have to strip down to their undies on the beach?  Why were they out in the water feeding the fish?  These were presented as couples-learning opportunities but never explored.  Instead they just led to silly jokes (like that fact that Faizon Love's character didn't happen to wear any undies that day).  Ooh... big laugh.  There's a yoga scene that is used as nothing more than simulated intercourse between the instructor and the participants.  Again... big laugh.  And a scene that was presented as a couples massage, but when one couple decides to split up, the opportunity is taken to present some additional inappropriate sexual situations. 

So, a lot of "therapy" is shown, but nothing that I found particularly clever, or useful.  In fact, I preferred the sessions where the couples actually sat down with individual therapists and actually TALKED.  Those sessions seemed like they at least had some potential to help these people.

Finally, there's a "twist" at the end.  It's not one I saw coming, so it provided a few moments of amusement (even if it wasn't particularly realistic). 

I would have enjoyed this film more, if it provided some real humor, as opposed to so many cheap sex jokes.  But the few jokes they provided were not my type.  And the rest of the movie is just dull.

And, I would have preferred it if the characters would have been more realistic or likable.  Bateman and Bell's characters take the "we're totally efficient in all aspects of our life" syndrome way too far.  To the point where their constant PowerPoint presentations have bored their friends to death one too many times.  Favreau and Davis are ridiculous in their willingness to toss each other away, and will leap at any opportunity handed them to cheat on each other.  And Love's character shouldn't have even been in the movie.  Who takes a girlfriend of two weeks on a vacation like this?  Especially since it's established that he has no spare funds.  It was so out of place for Bateman's character to pressure him into joining the other couples, it was just ridiculous.  Only Vaughn and Akerman present a couple that seemed "real" to me.  Sure, he works too much.  And yeah, she's a little pushy.  But so what - that's all part of a real marriage. 

Overall, this is an average movie that did very little for me.  With a decent cast, and some decent performances, it's "watchable".  But little more than that.

Recommended: No