\n\tHave you ever had the experience of booking a trip that promised to be a blissful getaway, only to find once there that you\u2019re having\u2026not the worst time, but definitely a disappointing one? That the food that looked so pretty online tastes bland in person, that the overstuffed pillows give you neck pains, that \u2014 come to think of it \u2014 there\u2019s not really that much to do at this resort beyond linger beside a lukewarm pool?<\/p>\n
\n\tIf so, the aura of letdown surrounding Spa Weekend, the latest outing from writer-directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, ought to feel familiar. On paper, it\u2019s a variation on the \u201cR-rated hijinks plus heartfelt emotion plus beloved cast\u201d equation that\u2019s worked so well for Bridesmaids<\/a> and Girls Trip<\/a> and Lucas and Moore\u2019s own commercially successful though creatively uninspired Bad Moms<\/a>. In execution, the hijinks feel awfully tame, the emotion shallow, the stars underserved.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tSpa Weekend\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n \tA likable cast let down by uninteresting hijinks.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tRelease date:<\/strong> Friday, Aug. 21 \n\tThe premise is the title, not much more and not much less. On the occasion of her she\u2019s-not-saying-which birthday, overworked Los Angeles lawyer Jane (Leslie Mann<\/a>) books a two-night stay at a wellness retreat seemingly around Malibu, though the Australia-shot production avoids getting too geographically specific. (Wherever it is, the sunsets are very pretty.) <\/p>\n \n\tAlong with her for the ride are her two childhood besties \u2014 sweet-natured Sophie (Anna Faris<\/a>), who\u2019s withering under a boss so spoiled he can\u2019t even buy his own Skittles, and hot-tempered Coco (Michelle Buteau<\/a>), who\u2019s working through a painful divorce while stubbornly not working through the anger management issues that led to it.<\/p>\n \n\tThe trip promises to be precisely the break all three of them desperately need but cannot ever seem to take, because as working moms pulled every which way by ailing parents, needy kids and demanding jobs, these women cannot imagine planning so much as a date night less than three months in advance. They could certainly never do something so self-indulgent as book a whole trip on a whim \u2014 except that that\u2019s exactly what we\u2019ve just seen them do, within five minutes of Coco floating the idea over brunch. <\/p>\n \n\tI presume the whiplash-inducing speed with which the trio go from \u201cOh, I couldn\u2019t possibly\u201d to \u201cWe\u2019ve booked the room\u201d is meant to be aspirational: Here are women finally saying \u201cscrew it\u201d to a society that demands they put everyone else first, and taking care of themselves for once! But it has the condescending effect of suggesting that their struggles were never real to begin with. The only thing ever actually holding them back, apparently, was their own lack of willpower.<\/p>\n \n\tWell, that and, in some roundabout way, their lack of appreciation for the unwanted fourth member of their circle. Mel (Isla Fisher<\/a>), who\u2019s only scored a last-minute pity invite thanks to Sophie\u2019s guilty conscience, is \u201cthe one woman all the others secretly cannot stand\u201d \u2014 you know, that thing Spa Weekend assures us every female friend group always has. If you can\u2019t identify who that might be in your own girl gang, maybe that\u2019s because it\u2019s you. Or maybe it\u2019s because Spa Weekend has a habit of treating all its characters\u2019 problems as universal and therefore inherently relatable and interesting. You can practically hear the \u201cAm I right, ladies?\u201d after every such observation.<\/p>\n \n\tIn fairness to Jane, Coco and Sophie, their distaste initially proves warranted. From the moment Mel bursts onto the property \u2014 boobs spilling out of her pushup bra, dildos spilling out of her suitcase, inappropriate language spilling out of her mouth \u2014 she brings nothing but chaos. When she\u2019s around, a guided meditation session devolves into a shouting match, a chill evening into a cocaine-fueled rager, a short walk between spa treatments into, somehow, a wild golf cart chase. None of it is anything you haven\u2019t seen before, and in Lucas and Scott\u2019s ineffectual hands, none of it gets as nasty or raunchy or destructive as those descriptions suggest.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat\u2019s more, Mel can\u2019t seem to stop meddling in her friends\u2019 live. She swipes Sophie\u2019s phone to scream at her shitty boss. She tricks Coco\u2019s ex (Dominic Ora-Ariki\u2019s Roger) into rushing to her side. She baldly propositions Adam Demos\u2019 hot yoga instructor on Jane\u2019s behalf (\u201cObviously she\u2019s on the older side, but she\u2019s got a porno body!\u201d). Her behavior is upsetting and mortifying and potentially life-destroying to all her friends until it\u2019s not, as Spa Weekend slowly but predictably gets around to the argument that the world needs Mels \u2014 the hot messes who force everyone else out of their miserable but societally approved ruts.<\/p>\n \n\tIt would be a very nice message, if not for the fact that the script undercuts it by keeping all its characters too vague and one-dimensional to care much about in any direction; I couldn\u2019t even tell you what Coco does for a living or why Jane\u2019s raising her kids alone. To the extent that there are any genuine chuckles or warm fuzzies to be found in Spa Weekend, it\u2019s thanks to skills this talented core cast have deployed more effectively elsewhere.<\/p>\n \n\tA pretty funny scene in which Jane tries very hard to pretend she\u2019s not extremely turned on by Demos\u2019 Kai giving her a hand massage called to my mind the even funnier ones of Mann smiling through her tears in Blockers. Coco\u2019s smooth, sexy chemistry with Roger made me want to revisit Buteau\u2019s winsome turn as a heartbroken stylist in Netflix\u2019s Survival of the Thickest<\/a>. Fisher earns most of the film\u2019s few real laughs by channeling the upbeat yet unhinged energy that\u2019s served her so well since her breakout in Wedding Crashers. Even Faris\u2019 miscast turn as awkward, mousy Sophie served to remind me how much more delightful she is when she gets to go weird and messy, as in The House Bunny or Smiley Face.<\/p>\n \n\tBut the ability to occasionally evoke other, better projects does not a good film make. Spa Weekend has nothing fresh or insightful or even all that amusing to add to the familiar formula it\u2019s borrowing \u2014 and for all its apparent good intentions, nothing much more meaningful to offer the overworked, overstressed moms of the world than the suggestion that maybe they could, like, try taking a vacation sometime. If this is what a big relaxing escape looks like, you\u2019re better off saving the money and chilling at home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Have you ever had the experience of booking a trip that promised to be a blissful getaway, only…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1018472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[87526,171,135168,114862,407625,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1018471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-anna-faris","tag-entertainment","tag-isla-fisher","tag-leslie-mann","tag-michelle-buteau","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117143085142622468","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1018471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1018472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1018471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1018471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Cast:<\/strong> Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher, Michelle Buteau, Anna Faris, Adam Demos, Dominic Ona-Ariki, Erika Heynatz
Director-screenwriters:<\/strong> Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRated R,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 37 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n