Film Friday

Spreading the films around this week… today’s serving consisted of horror/thriller Triangle and comedy Couples Retreat.

Triangle

First off, it’s hard to review this one without giving too much away. Suffice to say that the film doesn’t so much have a twist at the end so much as it is, in its entirety, one big twist.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Six friends go boating and get stranded. A huge ship rescues them, but it seems unpopulated. Bad things then happen. Again and again and again…

It’s a nice short film at around 90 minutes, so it’s punchy. No drawn-out nonsense. Also, once the twist starts to make an appearance the director drops the whole “things jumping out at you” horror schtick to make way for the more interesting story.

To say much more would be to risk spoiling the film. It’s definitely worth watching, even for those not really into “pure” horrors. There aren’t many true horror moments, it definitely is more of a Twilight Zone-esque movie and it’s very well made.

Couples Retreat

Am I alone in thinking this movie’s title really needs an apostrophe? As far as I can tell they’ve inadvertently changed the “Retreat” into verb and the title overall into an order instead of a description of where couples would go to – that being a “Couples’ Retreat”.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: a youngish couple have problems conceiving, their marriage is struggling so they opt to go to a paradise island with some of their friends to try and get over it. Of course, their friends are all couples in various states of relationship issues.

I expected to pretty much hate this film, or at the very least sleep through it as I was knackered. To its credit it actually held my interest for the near 2-hour running time and did actually offer a few decent laughs. It’s no classic, and Vince Vaughn plays the same character he always plays (a nice guy with some issues who, at the end, turns out to be… a nice guy). No surprise given he also co-wrote the film.

There are some moments which, in a less classy film, could end up being squirmy and unwatchable in a Börat or Mr Bean kind of way. However, in this case they’re given just the right amount of screen time and then passed on. The “couple counselling” sessions are just right and none of the characters is too over-the-top, except perhaps Trudy – the 20 year-old girlfriend of a recent divorcée.

In case you’re wondering where it was filmed, you want to hop on a plane to Bora-Bora. Be prepared to fork out around $1300 per night for one of the nicer shacks, though. Urgh.

Worth a watch if there’s nothing else on. Especially The Invention of Lying which this will doubtless be better than as it doesn’t feature Ricky “for crying out loud, just give up – you’re not funny” Gervais. Despite having a cinema pass I’ve still not bothered with that one.

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• Couples Retreat Review (themovieblog.com)