Who's saying what
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When it comes to comedy where do you draw the line between legitimate character development and stomach-churning sappiness?
Its no idle question where Couples Retreat is concerned. Its a comedy and it wants to make us laugh but its about dysfunctional relationships so at some level we have to not only like the characters we have to want to see a happy ending for them relationship-wise. They cant just be ragging on each other for ninety minutes then split up hilarious though that would be.
Which is why the set-up here is an odd mix of high concept comedy and semi-serious drama. The high concept is that four couples the happily married-with-children Dave and Ronnie (Vince Vaughn and Malin Akerman) the staying-together-for-the-kids Joey and Cynthia (Jon Favreau and Kristen Bell) replica zenith defy xtreme watches
the no-kids-and-on-the-verge-of-divorce Jason and Lucy (Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell) and the freshly-divorced-guy-and-a-twenty-year-old-he-picked-up-at-the-mall Shane and Trudi (Faizon Love and Kali Hawk) head off together to a luxurious island resort. They think theyre getting a great holiday for cheap only to discover that they have to go through the hard work of couples therapy whether they want to or not.
The drama kicks in within the relationships themselves as their various problems are taken surprisingly seriously for a comedy. There are a few cheap gags about the characters here and there as Joey wants to head off to the singles island to pick up and Dave wont stop going on about how he survived the most pathetic shark attack ever but for the most part? This plays the couples stuff straight which means a lot of this film really isnt all that funny. Luckily some of the funny bits are really funny with a creepy yoga teachers super-sexualised positions a Guitar Hero duel and the aforementioned crap shark attack going a fair way towards redressing the balance.
The sad thing is this film which does feature a small child telling his parents we just want you to be happy chronoswiss perpetual calendar replica watch
so have your sick buckets ready for that one was largely written by Vaughn and Favreau the combo that gave us Swingers and Made. Swingers was a sharp a lange sohne replica watch
insightful look into the mindset of single guys and Made was a trail-blazer in the kind of cringe comedy that The Office and Larry David have done so well out of.
Sometimes it feels like theyre trying to hit that earlier level of true-to-life comedy only about married couples. But more often this is just a patchy mildly entertaining totally forgettable film where a bunch of average guys have amazingly hot wives. So for all their troubles they must be doing something right.
Couples Retreat opens in Australian cinemas on Thursday October 8.
You can view the Couples Retreat movie trailer here on TheVine.
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