Vince Vaughn

Couples Retreat


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Rob picked the movie last night. He’s a big Vince Vaughn fan but we’d ended up taking Couples Retreat out of the library because Rob had gone searching for Jon Favreau films because the guy is responsible for IronMan. We’d watched IronMan 2 the other night – and it was time sucked from life that we’ll never recover, nevermind that Robert Downey Jr. plays narcissism like a Stradivarius. But, Couple’s Retreat. I think Vaughn is one-dimensional on his best day of acting but I’ll watch Jason Bateman in anything.

The premise of the film is that a group of friends travel to an exotic island to a resort that combines holiday and couple’s counseling. Bateman’s character and his wife, played by Kristen Bell, are on the verge of divorce after a year of unsuccessfully trying to conceive and they need the others to come along on this last-ditch effort to save their marriage because the resort offers a reduced rate for groups.

Mostly, it’s not funny. All the couples are in various states of dysfunction or relationship neglect. How that is funny escapes me, but there was a tantric yoga scene that was hilarious.

Yoga can be … intimate. Even when it doesn’t mean to be.

Tantric yoga though – is trying hard to be … cozy.

Along with yoga, there is the prerequisite counseling sessions with a shady looking bunch of therapists, dubious skill building activities and painfully unfunny dialogue

Ultimately, however, there is a happy ending. All is well. Unsurprisingly it is when the couples simply talk to each other that they are able to work through the issues that threaten them. Talking? Who knew? Apparently, a lot of people or why would the idea of couple’s therapy be cliché enough to make a rom-com about it?

It’s progress that the most stereotypical unlucky in love single in the movie is a guy and not the proverbially desperate white female of a certain age (that age being shockingly young anymore). And again, the problem was a common one – not copping to what you want, need and just being who you are – because honestly, that should be good enough if someone really loves you.

And that’s where the happy ending was to be found in Couple’s Retreat. In being one’s self and not accepting another person’s crap for your personal layering. Lesson being this – it’s only when you understand who you are, what you need and that you will be okay if taking action to be and get causes upheaval in your life – it’s then that everything will be okay. And more likely, people will still love you.

Just saying.

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Retrosexuals


I was reading an article on E!, or maybe it was MSN’s entertainment site, about the new age of the retrosexual or as it is more commonly known, Brad Pitt vs Vince Vaughn. It seems that the era of the man/woman is over and the dawn of the man’s man has come again. Metrosexuals, as you may remember, are those men who are not gay but look it. They are freshly scrubbed with aromatic soaps and shampoos. They use moisturizer, masculinely scented of course. They are secure enough in their maleness to have their nails manicured and their hair cut in salons. Coifed and cotured they strike out every morning, their non-fat lattes in hand, to do manly battle in workplaces all across America. Retrosexuals, on the other hand, revel in their unkemptness. With untucked dress shirts and collars open to the first wisps of fur that would undoubtedly cover their backs as well if they didn’t wax them (they are retro, not Neanderthal). They are the guys, and that slight paunch is not just a sign of their prosperity but an advertisement of their inner security. They could work out, but they don’t need to ladies because they are that good. And our preferences one way or the other, speak volumes about us as women. Do you like your man with a little girl in him, or do you take him flanneled and stubbly? Me? Give me the guy who takes up as little closet and vanity space as possible. Smelling good is one thing, and fighting me for mirror time is another. I like a man whose attempts at dressing up run towards the clean pair of jeans and the unscuffed running shoes, and when he does put on a suit, he still needs me to straighten his collar and tie. Trailing my fingers along a bearded jawline and imagining just how thick that chest hair might be is where great sex begins. At some point in every woman’s life she devolops a taste for men, grown-up and sexually threatening. That’s why readers of teen magazines eventually trade them in for Cosmo, and teen idols are abandoned for the Russell Crowes of the world. Men are supposed to be a little rough around the edges, and their kisses should occasionally leave you feeling scoured and looking wind-burnt.