Thirteen years after the smart “Swingers,” actor-writers Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau have stranded themselves on a laughless island in “Couples Retreat,” a schmaltzy, smutty and mean-spirited quasi-satire set in a touchy-feely New Age resort.
Hope they and the rest of the cast had a good time in Bora Bora. Anybody who actually spends $12 to see this sure won’t.
How unfunny is “Couples Retreat”? The inept directing debut from Peter Billingsley (the former child star of “A Christmas Story”) scores its biggest laughs with a 4-year-old relieving himself in a hardware store display. Twice.
If that doesn’t scare you away, this movie’s broad concept of romance embraces Favreau pleasuring himself in two different scenes.
Your 12 bucks also buys three sequences built around barely disguised commercials for “Guitar Hero” and Applebee’s.
All strung on a plot skimpier than Kristen Bell’s bikini.
Jason Bateman reeks of desperation as a control freak who, for no good reason, breaks into pal Vaughn’s house in the middle of the night.
Bateman begs dad-of-two Vaughn and Vaughn’s wife (Malin Akerman) to join Bateman and his wife (Bell), who are having trouble conceiving a child, for a relationship-healing retreat in the South Pacific.
God knows why he would make this request, let alone why Vaughn and two other couples would comply.
Favreau is a horndog improbably married to Kristin Davis, who also has a wandering eye. Their party is completed by even more tiresome stereotypes, the fat black divorced guy (Faizon Love) and his new, sassy and much younger girlfriend (Tasha Smith).
It gets worse as Vaughn, Favreau and credited co-conspirator Dana Fox bring on a “couples whisperer,” played by a spectacularly unfunny Jean Reno; wacky therapists, including Ken Jeong of “The Hangover”; a fascist majordomo with a fake-British accent (Peter Serafinowicz); and a hunky yoga instructor (Carlos Ponce) wielding an enormous bulge in his too-tight trunks.
Each is less funny than the last. I could go on, but suffice to say this movie practically bludgeons you with its sub-Apatovian gags, including a shark attack and multiple references to testicular cancer.
Like most of Universal’s offerings this year, you have to wonder exactly who (besides masochists) they thought would actually want to see “Couples Retreat” in a theater. Small wonder the studio fired its production chiefs this week.