Couples Retreat

Run, do not walk, past any theater showing Couples Retreat, the latest gruesomely unfunny “comedy” from co-stars and co-writers Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn. A movie that can manage to make a weeklong jaunt in sun-dappled Bora Bora seem like endless hell on earth must be a special kind of terrible—and trust us, this is one excruciating getaway.

Dull, middle-aged buds Vaughn, Favreau, Faizon Love and Jason Bateman get off their duffs long enough to fly to a luxury retreat to spark up their relationships with, respectively, Malin Akerman, Kristin Davis, Kali Hawk and Kristen Bell. There, they undergo various wacky forms of therapy at the hands of Jean Reno. Apparently, everybody must have counted on the cast’s comic riffing and improv chops to fill in the holes—because it’s for sure that nobody remembered to pack an actual script in their getaway luggage.

It’s faint praise to say that all of the actors have been much better elsewhere: The characterizations here range from shrill screaming to the bogus camaraderie of an Olive Garden commercial. Best that everyone involved forget this train wreck and write it off as a vacation gone horribly wrong. Let’s hope the tropical drinks and the paychecks were good.