Couples Retreat

I have ambiguous feelings about this movie. It bears the message that even women who look fantastic in bikinis well into their 30s and 40s can have problems with their marriages, and that those problems don't stem from the sexual insecurities that afflict their lustful but aging and paunching husbands. So, while the subject of marital problems is a poignant one, exploring it in a tropical setting and foisting those problems onto girthing, balding men as well as the fantasies to whom they're married seems in poor taste. Because who is the audience for this movie? Men who can go dream about porking Kristn Davis, Malin Akermann and Kristen Bell because their schlubby hubbies are too old and stressed to deliver? Married couples who will recognize some of the domestic issues that plague the couples retreating from each other? People who laugh at everything Vince Vaughan gurbles? In the pitch meeting, I'm sure the answer was ALL OF THE ABOVE, BABY! But then what happens when married couples can't identify with the retreating couples' problems because they're too cartoonish? Or when the problems are so recognizable that they're more uncomfortable than funny? Or when you feel guilty for mistaking the big roly poly black dude included in the gang for that guy who goes around revoking various establishments' Miller High Life vending privileges?
There are 25 years between Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell's starmaking small screen turns as Derek on Silver Spoons and Veronica Mars. So maybe in the same pitch meeting that sold a mixed audience of the horny and the emo to the money guys, they decided to grab for the clever too by making a meta-statement by making this couple make their chief argument about who makes who watch what on the television? I mean, if you're gonna go there, why not make Jason Bateman a scientist who makes his own televisions? And then make the sky have a storm that makes them afraid that they'll be made to stay on the island until somebody makes a signal that gets a rescue or maybe even a nautical craft of some sort? Because that's the kinda situation that really puts a couple under stress!
Other smallscreen star Kristin Davis, finally away from those shoppy hags she ran with in New York, tries to imbue her character with a dignity that screws up the whole tone. Who directed this thing? I'll look it up later, but my guess is somebody who has done considerable work with Gore Verbinski. Blogging of directing, the urban myth that has sprung up about key plot points to Iron Man II being drizzled in the sand by Jon Favreau's pee is patently false. I honestly don't know who starts these rumors, but it really just looks like sandy splatter.
Evaluating each individual performance or even the level of chemistry achieved by each couple is a waste of your time, dear reader. They took hot girls married to stand-ins for Harvey Weinstein and put them somewhere hot and sunny and did terrible things to them. If you're jealous, you'll think it's funny. If you aren't, you won't. And if you don't think it's funny, and you don't plan on wearing a heavy raincoat to the theater, then you really have no reason to see this movie.
One and a half stars.