A juvenile stew of one line potshots and sight gags
With
impeccable timing, “Couples Retreat” has shot a heat seeking missile at the
topic of the moment in our pop culture. This movie is a C grade companion piece
to Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of
Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. Together the movie and the book might
just signal the end of the era of seeing life through rose colored glasses. May
we now salute the possibility that people will be allowed to live in reality
rather than in a land of impossibilities.
So said,
there is a major problem with ‘Couples.’ It would be too much to ask co-writers
and producers Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau to inject sophistication into this
welcome premise when they are veterans of the slob and slacker culture that has
long operated in the realm of four letter words and pictures. What they have
given us here is a juvenile stew of one line pot shots and sight gags. A
juvenile stew on the subject is, however, better than no stew at all.
Joey (Jon
Favreau) and Lucy (Kristin Davis) are sunk in marital misery over matters of sex
and resentment; they lead three other couples to an island set in glorious
tropical waters (filmed in Bora Bora) with the promise of jet skis, dancing, and
the rekindling of their marriages without telling them they have been enrolled
in a mandatory couples restructuring course not unlike a Marine Corps boot camp.
The four
couples are met on the dock by the camp commandant who hands them their
compulsory schedules and orders them to go west to their headquarters while the
swinging young are directed eastward to the singles village. Scheming to get
from Rehabilitation West to Pleasure Island East becomes the plot.
The
filmmakers throw cold water all over easy solutions as four therapists guide
four couples through the clichés of their profession. Self-help groups are
ridiculed; the commandant throws in some sexy yoga positions to pacify the guys
who dream about Island East. The long haired, bronzed tennis instructor tempts
the wives with his oil soaked compliments. The fat forty year old parades his
arm candy; the ludicrous white hunter gets lost in the jungle on his way to
paradise. The picture dangles the wild pleasures of singledom, alcohol, and sex
when the real problem is that these men and women are simply sick of each other.
Why did this
mediocre film do $35,000,000 in business on its opening weekend? The buzz says
Universal Studios bought the reviews by bringing a plane load of press to Bora
Bora during the filming. Think again. The reviews have been terrible. Doesn’t it
speak to a collective impatience with the sights and sounds of a juvenile
pleasure culture, to the futility of quick fixes for human dilemmas? This movie
chose and hit its targets; now let’s hope someone will make a movie that will
grow from a generation looking for broader pleasures, or at least for more
interesting sins.
Copyright (c) Illusion