Expectations might be abnormally high for Couples Retreat given that it was written by Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, who also both star in the film. Sadly, neither their writing nor their screen presence is enough to make this film even remotely passable; this is a strangely almost laughless “comedy”, which fails to aptly balance its dramatic elements, and as a result squanders a talented comic cast.

Funnymen Vaughn and Favreau are joined by Jason Bateman and Faizon Love to form a quartet of men who aren’t particularly satisfied with their relationships. Spurred by a desire to fix their doomed marriage, neat freak Jason (Bateman) and his wife Cynthia (Kristin Bell) plan a vacation to Eden, a luxurious holiday resort, but for the holiday to be half price, the three other couples must also come along in a package deal. Joey (Favreau) and his wife Lucy (Kristin Davis), seeing a chance to live the party lifestyle they were never able to (as Lucy got pregnant when they were still kids), quickly agree, and recent divorcee Shane (Love), in an effort to impress his much younger girlfriend Trudy (Kali Hawk), decides that they should go.

The problem comes in convincing Dave (Vaughn) and his wife Ronnie (Malin Akerman), who are too bogged down with work and their two children to take a vacation. It’s a hurdle that the film takes far too long stumbling over, resorting to a rather sickening sentiment from their precocious children, resulting in their grandfather volunteering to look after them, leaving Dave and Ronnie free to go on the honeymoon they never had.

Couples Retreat is, at 113 minutes, an unjustifiably long comedy; it takes well over twenty minutes of redundant preambles before our four couples reach the resort, and when they finally do, it’d be reasonable to expect that things might pick up somewhat. The problem is that the material is painfully unfunny, and although attempts are made to substitute laughs for dramatics, there’s just not enough potent drama here to justify that. Admittedly, there are some decent cameos throughout; Peter Serafinowicz plays Sctanley, the group’s robotic and uptight party host, while Jean Reno makes a truly strange appearance as Marcel, a “couples whisperer” who advises the couples on how to fix their relationships. However, these curious pleasantries are hardly enough to keep this flagging picture afloat.

Once one accepts the surfeit of humour, there’s little to do but try and get involved in the dramatic element, for the film’s real points of interest are the neurotic conflicts not only within the relationships, but also between them. Again, the cast does a fine job, but the script simply isn’t up to grade, lacking the clever observance of some of the genre’s better outings. Instead, it builds these conflicts without following through with any intellect or insight.

Furthermore, the film grandly fumbles in its attempts to evoke sympathy; aside from Vaughn and Akerman’s fairly grounded couple, it’s difficult to imagine a group of couples worse-suited for each other and less capable of discussing their feelings. Thus, when the film reaches its predictably weak resolution, there’s little of the ambiguity or complexity of real relationships, and instead everything is tied up in a neat bow. The film almost schizophrenically glosses over how utterly mismatched all but one of these couples are, and instead presumes that sheer communication alone can remedy the fact that they probably shouldn’t be together in the first place.

This is unabashedly the least genuine dramedy of 2009; its surplus of crude humour lacks the wit infused into it by the likes of Judd Apatow, and although the film occasionally hints at some more astute and refined ideas, it cannot sustain dramatic and comic momentum over its far too long 113-minute runtime. Much of the latter portion of the film, for example, is spent looking for Trudy, who has fled to the singles-only side of the island, and while this could have been quite an amusing, Apocalypse Now-esque odyssey into the party zone, it’s instead dealt the most procedural, unimaginative treatment possible.

The film does well to mostly steer clear of pop-culture, which comedies are too often obsessed with, but you’ll probably find the Guitar Hero product placement quite tiresome given how many films the plastic guitars have now appeared in. Furthermore, even if you manage to make it through the stomach-churningly schmaltzy ending, the film’s final scene, which involves a low-rent scatological joke, leaves a sour taste in an already shoddy entree. All in all, if you’ll pardon the pun, this is one trip not particularly worth taking.