[Couples Retreat] is all about acknowledging feelings and good sex. Do we really need a film to tell us that?

| Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 16, 2019

The narrative is clunking and lazy, there to get characters from A to B without any respect for coherence or us, the audience.

| Aug 30, 2018

Couples is so formulaic, so fake and relentlessly bland, it's hard to care if any of these pairings get a divorce, drown or are eaten by sharks. It has neither the ring of truth nor the fun of fantasy.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 20, 2009

The debutant director is done no favours by a screenplay from Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau which gives him little to play with and them few chances to shine as actors.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 20, 2009

Why couldn't Couples Retreat have been lighthearted and zany throughout, instead of trying to push across a message about picket-fence monogamy?

| Oct 16, 2009

A rom-com short on romance and even shorter on laughs.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 16, 2009

Expectations of farce are stymied by long stretches of mid-life navel gazing.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 16, 2009

It is this vanity, this overweening self-regard, that makes Couples Retreat such a chore to sit through.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 16, 2009

A loo book written by Pol Pot would have more laughs than this chillingly unfunny, cynically prefabricated non-comedy.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 16, 2009

The only thing that will keep your attention for the duration is the stunning Tahitian scenery that acts the films setting. On reflection this is probably what swayed most of the cast to sign up to this inane guff of a film in the first place.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 16, 2009

If it were a send-up of couples therapy and its absurd language the film would at least be about something, but it hasn't even that much intelligence.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 16, 2009

Vaughn manages to grab more screen time to showcase his charisma but do we really need to watch his midlife crisis unfold over the course of nearly two hours?

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 16, 2009

It's too easy to say that Peter Billingsley shot his eye out with this inept comic trifle, but...well, he shot his eye out.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 14, 2009

The actresses are so wasted, they're even demoted to fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth billing under every one of the dudes. At least the guys aren't having fun either.

| Original Score: D | Oct 14, 2009

For a great deal of its running time it is raw, uncompromising and very, very funny, and even when things hit a dry spell I was still moved and amused enough to not particularly care.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 9, 2009

This is one of those films, like last week's Whip It and so many others of late, that looks like it was a lot fun to make. It's just not all that much fun to watch.

| Original Score: C- | Oct 9, 2009

The "retreat" in the title is surely a warning to any potential ticket buyers.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | Oct 9, 2009

There are also scenes, the disjointed kind that wander off aimlessly in the vague hope of finding a movie, not to mention a laugh.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 9, 2009

Couples Retreat is a comedy of exhaustion. But it is the comedy itself, in both concept and execution, that seems tired.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 9, 2009

Greatly silly and unexpectedly wise at times.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 9, 2009