Couples Retreat

Couples Retreat is not a movie I would normally go to. Romantic comedies I can do on DVD when I have a boring night ahead or need something mindless to watch. Occasionally I enjoy them, but more the ones where Mr McDreamy rides up to the church on a big white horse to stop the wedding of the girl he loves. Comedies with Vince Vaughn I find generally try a little too hard to be funny and don’t quite make it, or put all the funny bits in the trailers.

Couples Retreat is a little bit of both. I read the synopsis before I went in so had a wee bit of an idea of what the movie was about. Basically one couple want to go to this retreat in the tropics (the movie is filmed in Bora Bora – you’ll want to go there once you’ve seen the backdrop!) to try and fix their crumbling marriage. The only way they can get into the island’s marriage counselling programme is if they take a package which another group had cancelled. This requires three other couples to go along also. Luckily this couple have three couples who are all good friends and before they know it they’re on the way to the tropics. However, they are all under the impression the couple bonding activities are optional. Well, you can see where this is going. The couples end up participating in the couple bonding activities to ‘rebuild and maintain the marriage’ and it is either going to make or break them.

Without giving the plotline away, although that wouldn’t be hard, these movies are generally rather predictable, what ensues is a vaguely funny, quite amusing scenario of what happens if you put a group of couples who think their marriage is fine into marriage counselling. I can’t really go into detail about aspects of the story that I liked or didn’t like because to be honest there isn’t that much of a story.

There are of course those few moments that make you go ‘awww’ and those that make you think ‘that is how I want my story to end’ but if you want a decent movie that will make you really feel or think something, this probably isn’t the one for you. Go for something with more heart or real emotion, unless you’re in the mood to just watch moving pictures and not really process much, which let’s face it, we all have those days. It does have some decent acting in, and some parts that certainly had me laughing, although I think the movie was a little too long. If you’re into this sort of thing though, give it a whirl and enjoy.
Ciao.