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Canwest News Service
The latest hit romantic-comedy is Couples Retreat; it will likely reach close to US$100-million at the box office by next weekend, even though it scored a mere 11% at rottentomatoes.com.This is a website that collects critics’ responses but wisely makes no financial predictions based thereon. The film stars Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell as a couple who try to salvage their rocky marriage with a visit to a five-star tropical resort. Naturally, they bring along all their best-friend couples; even more naturally, hilarity ensues.
Under the heading of “If you think that’s funny …” Hollywood prepares to unleash more tales of marital woes played for laughs. You can see the trailers at apple.com/trailers. First up is Serious Moonlight, opening Dec. 4. Alas, it’s not about David Bowie’s 1983 world tour. Instead it stars Meg Ryan and Timothy Hutton as a married couple whose relationship is broken up by — wait for it — Kristen Bell, star of Couples Retreat. Must be some kind of karmic casting at play here.
When Hutton tries to leave, Ryan goes a bit Misery on him, knocking him out with what looks like a potted geranium (say it with flowers!) and then binding him to a chair with duct tape. She may even have learned this trick from other movies. When Hutton tells her: “You can’t keep a person hostage until they love you!” her response is: “I’m sure it’s been done before.” As long as no one makes a joke about someone being “all tied up,” it might work.
Did You Hear About the Morgans? opens Dec. 18 and gives us Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker as a couple on the verge of divorce. No exotic vacations for them, however — after they witness a murder and are in need of protection, they find themselves (no surprise, really) in the witness protection program.
This takes them to the small town of Ray, Wyo., where they are frightened by shotgun-toting locals, livestock, wild bears and Sam Elliott’s giant moustache. In fact, they spend so much time running away from things that this one might have been called Couples, Retreat! This is classic fish-out-of-water humour, made easier by the fact that Grant is out of water whenever removed from rural Sussex at teatime, and Parker feels lost anywhere outside 42nd to 72nd Streets, West Side.
Finally, there’s It’s Complicated, which opens Christmas Day and certainly seems to live up to its title. In it, Meryl Streep is married to Alec Baldwin, who leaves her to marry the much younger Lake Bell, until he discovers his second marriage isn’t as much fun as he’d hoped, whereupon he embarks upon an affair with his now-ex-wife, who’s also being wooed by Steve Martin, who plays an architect.
Perhaps he can design a huge house in which they can all live and bicker together. Because if there’s one thing Couples Retreat taught us, it’s that married misery loves company.
