Bottom of the barrel

Couples Retreat
15, Nationwide

Couples Retreat and, if you have an ounce of sense, so too will you. Retreat from this movie, and retreat as fast as your little legs will carry you. I didn’t actually intend to see this film this week. I intended to see Terry Gilliam’s Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, but events conspired against me, or it was the Gods, who haven’t liked me ever since I put a red T-shirt into a wash with my one good white shirt and then shook my fist at them. (It was quite a fist; it was my only serious white shirt.) I rather expected Couples Retreat to be bad, just from having seen the poster — ‘it may be paradise, but it’s no vacation’ — but this bad? I think I would have been shocked had I not, at least, managed to doze for quite a bit of it. And I thank the Gods for that.

Written by Vince Vaughn and John Favreau, possibly from the bottom of a barrel — ‘hey, John, what’s that noise?’, ‘well, Vince, I think you’ll find it’s us, scraping’ — the basic deal has four couples going to a gorgeous getaway island where marital counselling is also offered. The island is called ‘Eden’ but it is not the Eden from Antichrist, although one rather wishes it were. That would give them all something to think about. Anyway, the couples are played by Vince Vaughn and Malin Akerman; John Favreau and Kristin Davis; Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell; Faizon Love and Kali Hawk …look, we’re busy people, right? Well, I’m not particularly, but you might be, so I’ll just list the reasons why you should not see this film and if, by the end, it still sounds attractive to you, you cannot say I didn’t try my best.