Couples Retreat

Rating:*

Four couples get together on a fancy island resort in order to get in touch with their inner selves,and we get,as expected from a cast and a plot such as this,a load of pap. On men and women. On healthy marriages. On bad relationships.

Sometimes you can get good films made up of these familiar ingredients. Other times,you can get unpalatable sogginess. No prizes for guessing which category ‘Couples Retreat’ belongs to.

Muscled and oiled yoga instructors encourage the men to ‘lay it on’ the women. Helpful therapists ask the couples to look,really look,at each other. A wife tells another that her husband hasn’t touched her since they arrived on the island. Another realizes,after many years of nodding and going along with him,that her husband is a controlling jerk,and that’s the real trouble with their marriage,which they thought till then was doing fine. Wow. And a toga-clad,French-accented love guru wakes them up at dawn,gets them to take their clothes off and tell each other how they love their bodies. Double wow.

And finally,they learn their lesson: it is all about acknowledging feelings and good sex. Do we really need a film to tell us that?