martiniboys event calendar «»March 2010 Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Is there a Hollywood genre more battered and bruised these days than the romantic comedy? As long as there is dating there will be romantic comedies, so Hollywood cranks them out at quite a clip. Every few weeks it seems like another pair of pretty Hollywood stars meet cute and fall in love over an irritatingly syrupy and predictable 90 minutes. The movies are pretty well all the same and they are almost all bad. It’s time for someone to kill this genre or reinvent it. Seeing a perpetually shirtless Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson fall in love on a beach somewhere is getting old.

All of which makes Couples Retreat particularly disappointing. Given the talent involved, this should have been an exception to the rule: a romantic comedy that is actually worth watching. Unfortunately the movie turned out to be just as tired and uneven as the dozens of other rom-coms due to be released over the next few months. This one should have worked though. Not only does it star Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, but the talented comedians wrote it as well. Sure, both Vaughn and Favreau have made their share of stinkers in the past, but at least the only times they had collaborated behind the scenes was on Swingers and Made (arguably the best movies both guys have ever done). Before now it seemed like no matter what crappy projects Vaughn and Favreau signed up for to make cash as actors, they’d always put their hearts into the movies that they developed themselves. With Couples Retreat, that’s all over. This is one of the worst movies either one of them has ever made and their names are all over the credits.

So what is this credibility-killing beast about? Well, Vince Vaughn stars as a busy father struggling to adapt to married life (despite the fact he’s put a ring on the finger of the beautiful Malin Akerman). He has a few friends who are also having problems grinding into middle age. Jon Favreau plays a man who was thrust into maturity to early when he knocked up Sex And The City’s Kristin Davis in high school and is now bored with the marriage game. The always underrated Faizon Love plays a recent divorcee dating a 20 year old that he picked up at the mall. And then there’s Jason Bateman who plays an ultra uptight neurotic who is watching his young marriage with the absurdly attractive Kristen Bell come to an end. That’s a lot of characters to set up and it makes the first act of the film crawl by at a snail’s pace.

The plot gets set into motion when Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell reveal they are considering a divorce, but want to give the relationship one last shot with a tropical vacation. They convince their friends to come along so that they can afford the trip with a group rate and the movie is off to the races. When they get to the beautiful island resort, everyone is shocked to discover they’ve been swindled into a week of couples therapy in the sun. It turns out that every relationship is on the rocks once the therapists and couples skill building team leaders get a hold of this group of comedians. But don’t worry, it all works out (sure maybe that’s spoiler, but did you think for even one second that all these famous faces wouldn’t get a happy ending?).