COUPLES RETREAT
3 out of 5 stars

“wow, this place looks like a screensaver!” – joey (jon favreau)


sometimes we all need a little bit of therapy when it comes to relationships. sometimes it’s a little bit hard to resist when your friends jason and cynthia (jason bateman and kristen bell) present a full-out powerpoint presentation to you with a proposition to a magical, beautiful, mystical place called EDEN ISLAND. so... we’ve got four sets of couples in this flick about relationships and how to make the worst of the worst work. 1) the power couple: man controls everything in the relationship, thus suffocating the woman... 2) the worry worts: man and woman have separate needs/projects/wants and constantly worrying about the problems/kids... 3) the “couple”: yeah, they’re married but they don’t even stand the sight of each other... (also staying together for the sake of the child) 4) the old man and the young mistress: “age ain’t nothing but a number...” HA! tell them that when the man can’t stay awake past 10pm...

so, these couples travel to the exotic EDEN island to seek answers and to hopefully save their marriages... BEST scene(s) are probably the sexual yoga with the sexy yet not-so-great english speaking yoga instructor salvadore; vince vaughn’s character’s little boy peeing in the lowes show room (sooo cute!); jean reno dressed hilariously as a monk/dali lama/love guru type character; ken jeong (god, i love that guy from community and the hangover) as a hilarious marriage counselor; ghetto 20something trudy and her antics (“daddy, wanna go bang-bang in the hot tuuuuub?” LOL). i think this is one of the movies where the sub characters are actually more fun/hilarious than the main players... expect happy endings and cozy feelings of love... i was expecting more though, in the end. afterall it’s got vince vaughn! ehh...it just goes to show that he’s not funny w/o his boys around... (and what’s with the mis-matched casting? it’s like they just got whoever’s schedule was available at the moment...)

at least faizon love provides a lot of comic relief as the token black guy, and actually delivers a lot of funny lines i.e. “i ain’t harriet tubman!” when jon favreau asks him to find the big dipper in the sky. bahahaha! :P