Why not? It's coming out next weekend, and hopefully will make a significant dent at the boxoffice. The soundtrack can be streamed here, and this is a potent, very promising album. It's from A.R. Rahman, the Slumdog Millionaire musicmeister.

Reviews to follow, obviously.

I hope this is at least decent. Bateman, Vaughn, and Bell are all appealing. And it's directed by Ralphie from A Christmas Story! And aside from I Love You Man and The Hangover we haven't had much in the way of for-the-fun-of-it comedies this year.

I really like Bateman and Bell both, but Vince Vaughn is on my list of "Had About Enuff Of," right underneath Seth Rogen and Michael Cera. Until he stops hamming it up for the camera, and starts playing a character that isn't some gross, potty-mouthed man-child, I will remain cautious.

Everything else in the cast & crew list looks appealling, though.

So PaulHan starts a thread for a film that is not likely to play any part in the Oscar race and stars Kristen Bell. Color me surprised.

This movie looks just terrible to me. Just terrible.

And when will gay panic stop being looked at as funny?

And Adventureland is an Oscar contender, pacinofan?

Get the mother-eff over yourself.

Not every movie discussed in this thread is an Oscar contender, it should probably be more accurately called the Movies Forum, but I was just pointing out that there was a pretty clear reason that you started a thread on a film that is likely to get lousy reviews. At least "Adventureland" got good reviews.

quote:

Originally posted by pacinofan:
So PaulHan starts a thread for a film that is not likely to play any part in the Oscar race and stars Kristen Bell. Color me surprised.

You beat me to it.

And, yeah, this film does look kinda crappy, which it shouldn't, considering the comedy cream of the crop are in it.

The director of this film is Peter Billingsley, best known for playing Ralphie Parker in A Christmas Story back when he was 11.

A B- review from ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY...

By Owen Gleiberman

As the buddies of Swingers (1996), the classic L.A.-set guyville comedy that put the two of them on the map, Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau had a new kind of snappishly disaffected camaraderie. They were friends who each acted like a spiky entourage of one; their bond — figuring out how to impress a girl by pretending not to care about her — was built around bolstering each other's egos by getting in each other's faces. Swingers, which Favreau wrote, came out 
 13 years ago, but once you've seen Couples Retreat, the mediocre, funnier-at-times-than-you-expect, more-middle-class-stodgy-than-it-should-have-been new comedy about four couples (most of them old friends) who attempt to heal their relationships at a New Age therapeutic resort, it feels as if it came out about 113 years ago.

Vaughn and Favreau are still getting in each other's faces, but what a difference a 
 decade makes. We've all heard of failing upward; with Couples Retreat, Vaughn and Favreau seem to be succeeding downward. Written by both of them (along with Dana Fox), and directed by Peter Billingsley, it's one of those comedies in which each couple comes with its own cute tics and tidy conflicts — like, say, 
 Jason and Cynthia (Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell), who are fraying each other's nerves because they can't conceive a child (they also fray the nerves of the audience by explaining their lives as a PowerPoint presentation). Or Shane (Faizon Love), the roly-poly divorced dude who brings along his high-lariously 
 inappropriate paramour, 20-year-old party girl Trudy (Kali Hawk), who likes to call him ''Daddy'' from across crowded rooms.

As for Vaughn and Favreau, they're the beleaguered, hanging-in-there marital vets. Vaughn's Dave is a relatively centered father who, despite being chained to his job as a videogame salesman, would do well to stop brushing off the minor requests of his wife, Ronnie (Malin Akerman, as a miraculously radiant overworked mother of two). Favreau's Joey is an angry lug trapped in a union of toxic insincerity with Lucy (Kristin Davis), who knows how to give as bad as she gets.

Kicking off their package-deal vacation, which they've all been roped into out of solidarity with Jason and Cynthia and their fertility issues, the eight arrive at Eden, an idyllic island of luxury huts and aqua-blue ocean (Joey: ''Holy s---, this looks like a screensaver!'') in Bora Bora. But, of course, it's a bogus paradise. There are circling sharks, ''Couples Skill Building'' counselors with even sharper teeth, a goofy idiot of a French guru (Jean Reno), and an even more idiotic French Fabio of a yoga instructor (Carlos Ponce) who pins everyone into high-lariously overt sexual positions. Meanwhile, bubbling just under the surface of the film's variety pack of marital strife is that prickly Vaughn/Favreau hostility.

Favreau now plays men with incredibly short fuses, and he's funny every time his gets lit. He also does great double takes when a waiter catches him attempting to pleasure himself to a brochure photo. As for Vaughn, he remains a testy master of talking circles around himself, as in the moment when Dave realizes that his assigned couples therapist, played with yummy smugness by John Michael Higgins, is doing all he can to make the marriage worse. Later, after being nicked by a shark, Vaughn turns his ''close encounter'' with death into an anxiety attack that keeps on giving.

The movie builds toward a clandestine group voyage to the other side of the Eden resort, the section of the island devoted to Dionysian Jell-O-shot-happy singles. To our jaded couples, it's forbidden paradise — a fleshpot Bali Hai. Up until this point, Couples Retreat has a pleasantly relaxed, episodic rhythm. As the plot kicks in, it grows more impersonal, though I did enjoy the ''athletic'' climax: a Guitar Hero duel, amusing because even the winner's victory is so desperately vicarious. Couples Retreat is fluff, a genially banal message comedy about learning to live with your spouse by staying true to yourself. But thanks to Vaughn, Favreau, and the stray sharp lines that pop out of everyone else, the film at least offers the lively sound of egos that still know how to swing. B–

A negative review from THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER...

Couples Retreat -- Film Review
By Kirk Honeycutt, October 07, 2009 03:51 ET

Bottom Line: This intermittently funny tale of four couples undergoing relationship therapy struggles hard for its occasional laughs.


A good idea for a sophisticated comedy lurks within the latest Jon Favreau-Vince Vaughn collaboration, "Couples Retreat," but the filmmakers lack the courage of their convictions. So the payoff is mixed at best. The problem might lie in that word "sophisticated." The current trends in film comedies are raunch and juvenilia, the very antithesis of sophistication.

When Favreau and Vaughn came to everyone's attention more than a dozen years ago with "Swingers," they seemed to have the knack for making a guy movie that was both hip and empathetic about men's sexual insecurities. But the two don't quite reclaim that territory in "Retreat," which could very well be a follow-up to that tale of randy twentysomething males about town, now married and experiencing varying degrees of marital stress.

Boxoffice potential is difficult to judge. Normally, a film involving either or both actors-writers-producers and (in Favreau's case) a director has strong commercial appeal. But the marital issues raised might puzzle or distract younger fans expecting sexual tease and potty humor.

In fact, Favreau and Vaughn suffer from the same distraction. There is sexual tease and potty humor here, the latter involving Vaughn's young son, and it's very funny. The sex stuff works less well and feels out of place among married people trying to work through legitimate issues couples face in real life. So the script the two wrote with fellow comedy writer Dana Fox gets pulled in opposite directions.

The idea is to send four couples off to an island paradise that serves as a retreat for couples experiencing relationship woes. One couple (Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell) is contemplating divorce.

The anchor couple, Vaughn and Malin Akerman, is a well-adjusted pair with kids, friends and busy lives. Another couple, Favreau and Kristin Davis, are more dysfunctional than they might realize, and the fourth "couple" barely qualifies as such. Faizon Love is newly divorced and has agreed to go along with his 20-year-old girlfriend, Kali Hawk, whom he has just met.

The other three couples have come along as a favor to Bateman and Bell because this gives them a cut-rate deal at the island resort (shot in French Polynesia). But the imperious couples guru (Jean Reno) insists that everyone must participate or they can all leave with refunds. Predictably, once the shrinks and relationship experts go to work, no one's marriage is safe.

The best sections of the film deal with Vaughn and Akerman since it represents a critique of the relationship industry that is determined to justify its existence in finding problems even if none exists. The most problematic in comedic terms involves Favreau and Davis. No week at a couples retreat is going to solve their myriad problems.

Because the movie can't get stalled in therapy sessions, it does venture into the island for forced situation comedy involving a shark attack, an unlikely yoga session and a body massage where mixed signals result in an embarrassing male arousal. The real problem, though, is that the movie can't decide how seriously it wants to take its characters and their conflicts.

Producer-turned-director Peter Billingsley wisely turns the movie over to his talented cast. He and the writers can be faulted, however, for emphasizing the male characters over the women even if the title alone would seem to dictate more even-handed portrayals.

Tech credits are solid, with the film repping the American debut of Indian superstar film composer A. R. Rahman. His is an efficient though relatively unmemorable job, the only hint of his Indian roots coming in the almost superfluous sequences involving Reno's "couples whisperer."

This message has been edited. Last edited by: pacinofan,

A negative review from Dennis Harvey in VARIETY...

"Couples Retreat" is one of those movies that makes moviemaking look like the luckiest job in the world. Those involved got to spend weeks at a Bora Bora luxury resort; all we get is this not lousy but unmemorable tropical-vacation comedy. Reuniting several frequent past collaborators (most notably "Swingers" alums Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau), the tale of four couples at a relationship workshop in an exotic locale has a good premise, an appealing cast and some bright ideas that only fly so high due to pedestrian execution. Still, pleasant-enough results should earn solid midrange B.O. numbers.
After a nice opening-credits montage of couples imagery since cinema's beginning, we're introduced to various Illinois duos. Dave (Vaughn) and Ronnie (Malin Akerman) have a happy, slightly chaotic household with two young sons and a normal amount of stress. On the other hand, former high school sweethearts Joey (Favreau) and Lucy (Kristin Davis) are just hanging on until their daughter's imminent departure for college, at which point they'll gladly separate.

Shane (Faizon Love) has recently divorced the wife he could never please (Tasha Smith) and taken up with 20-year-old wild thang Trudy (Kali Hawk). She calls him "Daddy" -- which, indeed, he might be mistaken for. And though they seem perfect for each other, persnickety pair Jason (Jason Bateman) and Cynthia (Kristen Bell) drop a bombshell: After eight years' wedlock undone by failure to conceive, they worry they aren't soulmates after all.

Determined to give it one last shot, Jason and Cynthia have found a program -- at the alluring Eden Resort, billed as "Disneyland for adults" --that could salvage their relationship. Trouble is, they can only afford the group rate. They beg the others to sign on, promising them they can enjoy fun in the sun while Cynthia and Jason work on "renewing bonds."

Upon arrival, Eden (actually the St. Regis in Bora Bora) proves duly idyllic, and the inevitable tourist shots of its splendid setting come as a relief after thesp-turned-producer-turned-first-time-director Peter Billingsley's blah-looking first reel. But world-famed "couples whisperer" Marcel (Jean Reno) has a program in store that's much more intensive than expected. Far from being allowed to snorkel, doze and work on their tans, the couples are expected -- even demanded -- to rise at dawn for "skill-building exercises" that are like a kind of New Age boot camp. These push the central duos -- and the friendships between them -- to near-breakup points.

While the inevitable happy endings are orchestrated with just enough finesse to satisfy, elsewhere "Couples Retreat" wobbles. The screenplay (credited primarily to Favreau, with Vaughn and Dana Fox billed beneath), sports a fair number of good throwaway lines but could be a lot sharper overall.

Billingsley's workmanlike helming delivers a couple of hilarious scenes; the PG-13 pic's raunchiest moments include a frustrating erotic-massage interlude for Lucy and Joey, and a sexually inappropriate yoga class taught by hunky Salvadore (Carlos Ponce). Yet elsewhere, the helmer impresses too little imagination or personality, failing to blend seriocomic tones that occasionally tumble into the heavy-handed, maudlin or cloying (via some horribly precocious child-actor moments).

Pic moves briskly but, at 113 minutes, clocks long for a mainstream comedy; more inspiration in tech/design departments would have been welcome. Thesps remain amiable, even if all have been deployed to greater advantage elsewhere -- the exception being relative newcomer Hawk, whose character is a giddy party-hearty contrast to the older principals, and whose performance is a consistent hoot.

A * star review from SLANT...

by Nick Schager
Posted: October 7, 2009


An ostensible paean to making a marriage work, Couples Retreat is instead so long, inert, and torturously unfunny that it makes a strong case for the drunk-and-promiscuous single life. In a last-ditch effort to save their union, analytical Jason (Jason Bateman) and barren-wombed Cynthia (Kristen Bell) convince their friends to join them on a vacation at Eden, a tropical paradise where the troubled couple can partake in therapy while the rest of the group can party to their hearts' delight. Upon arriving at this "Disneyland for adults," however, it turns out that everyone has to spend time with the shrink or risk being thrown off the island, a fate which—unfortunately for the art of cinematic comedy—does not befall these universally bland, mirthless individuals.

During the course of their stay, Dave (Vince Vaughn) discovers that he's not paying enough attention to Ronnie (Malin Akerman), Joey (Jon Favreau) and Lucy (Kristen Davis) learn that they'd rather go to Applebee's together than cheat on each other, and Shane (Faizon Love) realizes that he prefers his ex-wife to current 20-year-old girlfriend Trudy (Kali Hawk). All of these revelations revolve around pitifully dull matrimonial truisms—Listen! Be more open with your feelings! Don't take your spouse for granted!—but, worse still, are delivered with an apathy unbecoming of its usually likeable and energetic cast.

Despite being co-written by Swingers and Made mates Favreau and Vaughn, the two only share a solitary one-on-one spat, which like the rest of the proceedings feels made up on the fly. That certainly holds true with regard to Peter Billingsley's flat direction, which, when not slapping together mismatched shots, manages to make the story's gorgeous setting seem like your run-of-the-mill Florida getaway-cum-backlot set. With neither insights nor laughs, the script a mess of laborious therapy-session chitchat and punchline-less hijinks that go nowhere (including Vaughn gamely yet futilely trying to riff his way out of a shark-attack scenario), Couples Resort ultimately comes off as merely an excuse for stars to take a vacation on the studio's—and moviegoing public's—dime.

This movie looks like they took the Hank Azaria portion of 'Along Came Polly' (more Aniston dreck) and stretched it out into a full-blown film.

A 'barren-wombed' Kristen Bell? FORCED sessions with a freaking shrink?

barren wombed???
Is this some Jacobite snickering at Queen Anne?

Normally likeable? Vince Vaughn?

sure.

A negative review from THE ASSOCIATED PRESS...

By Christy Lemire

updated 55 minutes ago
LOS ANGELES - “Couples Retreat” suggests what life might have been like if the guys from “Swingers” had grown up, moved to the suburbs and turned into lame, sitcommy cliches.

Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn team up again, on screen and on the script (along with Dana Fox), for this broad comedy about four couples who go on a tropical vacation together.

In theory, they’re all there to support their friends Jason (Jason Bateman) and Cynthia (Kristen Bell) as they try to save their marriage through the couples’ counseling the resort offers. Little do they know they’ll get sucked into agonizing therapy sessions that reveal their own rifts. For example: Vaughn’s character, Dave, doesn’t care about picking out tile to redo the kitchen. His wife, Ronnie (Malin Akerman), does. It’s a laugh riot if you think Paul Reiser’s “Couplehood” is funny — and we haven’t even gotten to their painfully cute young son whose defining personality trait is urinating and pooping in inappropriate places.

Under the direction of Peter Billingsley (Ralphie from “A Christmas Story”), another longtime Vaughn friend and collaborator making his first feature, “Couples Retreat” veers back and forth in a jarring way between crude sexual humor and supposedly poignant moments. The couples endure forced nudity and a wildly erotic yoga class; Favreau’s character, Joey, and his wife, Lucy (Kristin Davis), who married right after high school, each try to get it on with their respective massage therapists. But all must also bare their souls, which feels wedged-in and unconvincing compared to the proliferation of physical humor.

Faizon Love rounds out the group as the divorced Shane, who brings along his 20-year-old girlfriend, Trudy (Kali Hawk), a shrill party girl who likes to call him “Daddy” and pour hot wax on his naked chest.

Each of these characters is exactly the same person the whole way through, until one night when they all magically experience an epiphany that makes them more communicative, patient and loving. During such moments, a distracting, feel-good score — surprisingly from “Slumdog Millionaire” Oscar-winner A.R. Rahman — pipes in early and often.

“Couples Retreat” makes fun of the people who run the place, including the New Age-y mastermind, Monsieur Marcel (Jean Reno in a braided tail and a Speedo), and the condescending concierge, Sctanley (Peter Serafinowicz) — spelled with a “c.” But ultimately it embraces the very lessons the resort is trying to teach. It also finds time for a little shameless product placement along the way: an extended ad for “Guitar Hero,” right as the movie is approaching its big, revelatory climax.

A few funny lines and ideas emerge here and there — the rigid Jason’s fondness for PowerPoint presentations is vaguely amusing — but “Couples Retreat” mostly feels repetitive and overlong at nearly two hours. You wouldn’t mind getting voted off this island.

quote:

Originally posted by babypook:
A 'barren-wombed' Kristen Bell? FORCED sessions with a freaking shrink?

barren wombed???
Is this some Jacobite snickering at Queen Anne?

Normally likeable? Vince Vaughn?

sure.

LOL @ babypook.

A ** review from Roger Ebert...

"Couples Retreat" tells the story of four troubled couples and how they're healed by sitcom formulas. Why are they troubled? Because the script says so. It contains little comedy, except for free-standing one-liners, and no suspense, except for the timing of the obligatory reconciliation. It doesn't even make you think you'd like to visit its island paradise.

The couples are apparently all from Buffalo Grove, which supplies nothing visual except for a T-shirt. Three of them think they're reasonably happy, but their friends Jason (Jason Bateman) and Cynthia (Kristen Bell) beg them to join them for a week at a resort devoted to healing relationships (if four couples go, it's half price).

Jason and Cynthia are anguished because they haven't had a child. The other couples are Dave (Vince Vaughn) and Ronnie (Malin Akerman); Joey (Jon Favreau) and Lucy (Kristin Davis), and Shane (Faizon Love) and Trudy (Kali Hawk). Their troubles: (1) Parenting duties distract from romance; (2) Joey's wandering eye; (3) Shane has split from wife and is dating a 20-year-old bimbo.

They fly to the Eden resort, which uses locations on Bora Bora, a truly enchanted place that's reduced to the beach-party level. Eden is run by Monsieur Marcel (Jean Reno), a martial-arts mystic, and managed by Cstanley (Peter Serafinowicz), who explains his name is spelled with a "C." Other staff include Salvadore (Latin pop singer Carlos Ponce), doubling for a model on the cover of a lesser romance novel.

The formula itself might have supported hilarity, but the story lacks character specifics. Each couple behaves relentlessly as an illustration of their problem. The movie depends for excitement on a shark attack during a scuba-diving exercise, featuring clueless sharks and an enormous pool of blood apparently leaked from a tiny superficial scratch. Salvadore charms the wives somewhat ambiguously with his oiled pecs and bottles of pineapple-rum drinks. The men don't bond as much as stand together onscreen and exchange bonding dialogue.

There is a twin resort named East Eden, which has all swinging singles, as opposed to troubled couples. It's a party scene every night; as nearly as I could tell, our four couples are the only clients on West Eden, so no wonder there was a 50 percent off deal, despite Cstanley's talk of the long waiting list.

Among the better things in "Couples Retreat," I count Vaughn's well-timed and smart dialogue; the eccentricity of Love and Hawk in contrast to the cookie-cutter couples, and Serafinowicz's meticulous affectations, which suggest psychotropic medication.

The concluding scenes are agonizing in the way they march through the stages dictated by an ages-old formula. We know all four couples must arrive at a crisis. We know their situations must appear dire. We expect a transitional event during which they realize the true nature of their feelings. This is a wild party night at East Eden. We expect sincere confessions of deep feelings. And we know there must be a jolly conclusion that wraps everything up.

In the context of the film, the jolly conclusion must be seen to be believed. Were all the transitional events anticipated, even planned, by the the all-seeing Monsieur Marcel? Marcel hands each couple an animal representing their true inner animal spirits. These figures are carved from a dark wood, which I deduced after seeing the second, third and fourth animals. The first was a rabbit, which looked like nothing else than a chocolate bunny. That would have been strange.

A short, very negative review from L.A. WEEKLY...

COUPLES RETREAT Couples, retreat. In the latest from Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau (co-starring and co-writing), we learn that one compelling reason to make a life commitment is so you will always have someone to eat with at Applebee’s. The movie’s cumulative idea is that, forgetting the delusions of midlife panic, this is all there is, you’re already living the best possible life — a message of sedentary wisdom betrayed when the actual film is as undeniably dreary as a plate of gummy Chicken Parmesan Tanglers. Vaughn, Favreau (flagrantly shirtless), Jason Bateman, and Faizon Love are four buddies, just “regular guys” — meaning, as always, puffy, dull-minded lunks, with Vaughn increasingly being Jim Belushi’s heir apparent. They take their respective significant others on a group vacation to an island paradise, along with maybe 12 pages of sit-comic script outline, to be riffed out into feature length. Arriving at the Eden Resort, our beer-commercial heroes are menaced by enforced couple’s therapy and the resort’s staff of Speedo-wearing homo-macho Euro-Hispanic Others (Jean Reno, Carlos Ponce), who put them through yoga humpings and realityTV–type challenges intended to renew the spark missing from their relationships. The presence of Bateman begs comparison with the funnier-while-thematically-similar Extract, though Retreat also recalls Voyage in Italy, if Rossellini were to replace intimate human insight with lowest-common-denominator doody-boner-bare butt-jackoff haw-haws. (Citywide) (Nick Pinkerton)

A ** review from Michael Phillips in THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE...

Remember “I Will, I Will ... For Now,” the 1976 comedy starring Elliott Gould and Diane Keaton about a husband and wife taking a chance on a swingin’ sex clinic in order to reignite That Spark?
A year from now you won’t remember “Couples Retreat” either. It’s a commodity made to be consumed, not remembered, and if Vince Vaughn could help make “Four Christmases” a success, he may well get audiences to down this one too.

Now, I like Vaughn. He’s both a real actor (“Into the Wild” for starters) and, with the right material, an ingratiating movie star with regular-guy appeal. Watching the unstable but intriguing machinations of “The Break-Up” you could trace precisely why that film clicked at the box office against all predictions. The scenes in which Vaughn’s character finally owned up to his own shortcomings to the Jennifer Aniston character, along with the scenes with his brother, played by Vincent D’Onofrio — these had real feeling behind them, and Vaughn went at them bravely.

By contrast, the sloppily written shenanigans guiding “Couples Retreat” are all about movie star maintenance, giving Vaughn (who co-wrote and produced) the last word in every situation, the upper hand in every encounter and nothing fresh to play. Director Peter Billingsley shot most of it in Bora Bora. The results are boring boring, and whether he’s being circled by computer-generated sharks or bugged by sniveling Frenchmen and Brits, we’re supposed to side with Vaughn simply because he’s Vaughn, our adorable urban caveman.

He and Malin Akerman play Dave and Ronnie, one of four Chicago couples in the story. The husband and wife played by Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell, coping with infertility and other issues, ask their pals to join them on a tropical couples retreat to see them through to divorce or to reconciliation. Jon Favreau and Kristen Davis play Joey and Lucy; Faizon Love and Kali Hawk play Shane and his much-younger girlfriend, Trudy, though Vaughn’s character seems contemptuous at best when it comes to most of these folks’ problems.

The gang thinks it’s getting umbrella drinks and beach time. They’re met instead with a stern regimen of “couples-whispering” tactics proffered by flaky resort owner Marcel (Jean Reno, searching in vain for a verifiable joke). These entail therapy sessions, yoga taught by a hunk who’s distracting enough to entice the ladies and threaten the men and generally staying away from the fun, singles-minded side of the island, where temptations lie.

Though I enjoy nearly everyone on-screen in “Couples Retreat,” I found it pretty meager and more than a little depressing. By the end, we’re meant to be reassured and sent out smiling. So why did I feel as if I’d just watched a Hollywood remix of Bergman’s “Scenes From a Marriage”?