The new Vince Vaughn comedy Couples Retreat opens today at the Meridian and other theaters. Here’s a short take from Nick Pinkerton:Couples, retreat. In the latest from Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau (co-starring and co-writing), we learn that one compelling reason to make a life commitment is so you will always have someone to eat with at Applebee’s. The movie’s cumulative idea is that, forgetting the delusions of midlife panic, this is all there is, you’re already living the best possible life–a message of sedentary wisdom betrayed when the actual film is as undeniably dreary as a plate of gummy Chicken Parmesan Tanglers. Vaughn, Favreau (flagrantly shirtless), Jason Bateman, and Faizon Love are four buddies, just “regular guys”–meaning, as always, puffy, dull-minded lunks, with Vaughn increasingly being Jim Belushi’s heir-apparent.They take their respective significant others on a group vacation to an island paradise, along with maybe 12 pages of sitcomic script outline, to be riffed out into feature length. Arriving at the Eden Resort, our beer-commercial heroes are menaced by enforced couple’s therapy and the resort’s staff of Speedo-wearing homo-macho Euro-Hispanic Others (Jean Reno, Carlos Ponce), who put them through yoga humpings and reality-TV-type challenges intended to renew the spark missing from their relationships. The presence of Bateman begs comparison with the funnier-while-thematically-similar Extract, though Retreat also recalls Voyage in Italy, if Rossellini replaced intimate human insight with lowest-common-denominator doody-boner-bare butt-jackoff haw-haws. (Rated PG-13, 105 min.) NICK PINKERTON
More Stories From This Author
Mercer Island School District faces $13.4M sex abuse claim
School leaders received numerous reports that former high school English teacher Curtis Johnston was “dating” a student but failed to intervene, complaint says.
By Moe K. Clark, InvestigateWest • March 5, 2026 3:08 pm
O’Reilly Auto Parts to pay $5.6M for employee discrimination
Missouri-based O’Reilly Auto Enterprises will pay $5.6 million for widespread denial of pregnancy and nursing accommodations to Washington workers under…
By
Steve Hunter • March 5, 2026 9:47 am
KC Council approves moratorium on detention centers
The King County Council approved a moratorium on detention centers in unincorporated King County as an effort to limit immigration…
By
Drew Dotson • March 4, 2026 4:10 pm
