“Couples Retreat” Gave Me A Bit Of Deja Peeee-yew!

This is likely not how the braintrust behind “Couples Retreat” would like for their movie to be described right off the bat in a review, but the only way for me to get started is by saying that it was not quite as bad as I thought it would be. Now, don’t get me wrong, it was pretty weak -- but it did at least have some funny and entertaining scenes, which is all I usually ask out of a Vince Vaughn vehicle.

“Couples Retreat” felt like it had almost the exact same cast as “The Break-Up,” and it was directed by Peter Billingsley (“Ralphie” from “Christmas Story”) and written by Vaughn, Jon Favreau and Dana Fox. The plot pretty much centered around middle-aged white douches with hot wives bitching about the predictability and stress of their lives, until one of the couples reveals that they are going to paradise (filmed in Bora Bora) in a last-ditch effort to save their marriage (the PowerPoint presentation detailing the pros and cons of divorce was amusing). However, they can only afford it if all their friends go as well, as part of a group rate. Faizon Love makes an appearance as the token black buddy, but I’m going on record as saying that every movie needs an obese black man who farts a lot. On a side note, apparently the black stars of the flick were airbrushed out of international versions of the movie poster, which caused a bit of a controversy.

When the destination resort isn’t exactly what they expected it to be, the rest of the film unfolds pretty much how you’d expect, with the normal dosage of sophomoric, scatological and homoerotic humor. There was a shark scene that was slightly scary for me, but interestingly, the two scenes of adultery were removed (included in the deleted scenes), possibly to keep the PG-13 rating. I did find myself wishing that the Chinese therapist, the hilarious Ken Jeong, got more face-time, but apparently the think-tank behind “Couples Retreat” felt that the 10-minute advertisement for Guitar Hero was more essential to the story.

For me, the highlight was the awesome scene of a kid peeing (and then dropping a deuce) in a floor model toilet, an occurrence I may or may not have partaken in as a child. Vaughn’s line of “There’s really not much to say here” after a long, awkward stare-down with the store employees was priceless.

Unfortunately, when the bright spot of a flick is when a 6-year-old takes a dump in a fake toilet, then, well, you get the picture of just what you’re getting with “Couples Retreat.”