Spa Weekend is a bit of a throwback - well, every comedy that makes it to the big screen these days is a throwback, the golden age of big screen comedy now being firmly a decade or more in the rear view. But it's the kind of "we got a bunch of comedians together and let them improv scenes" comedy that once ruled the roost... and then wore out its welcome. Have lessons been learnt?
Well, kind of. After a premise-establishing prologue in which all four main characters are set in stone as kids, we jump forward to today to see how they're coping with adulthood. Short answer: not well.
Jane (Leslie Mann) is a high powered lawyer so snowed under with work and single motherhood that when a cute lawyer hits on her she can't schedule a date for the next three months. Sophie (Anna Farris) works for a controlling boss who is basically a man-baby, Coco (Michelle Buteau) has anger issues that destroyed her relationship to her nice guy ex, and Mel (Ilsa Fisher) is... seemingly in France, which is where everyone would like her to stay because she's a maniac.
With Jane's birthday coming up, Coco and Sophie gently nudge her towards the idea of a spa weekend. Nobody really wants Mel to ruin the vibe, so she's out. The resort is luxe (it was filmed on the Gold Coast), the vibe is chill, and is the hot yoga teacher (Adam Demos) checking Jane out?
Isla Fisher is first in the credits so no surprise she turns up. Sophie felt bad for not inviting her and who thought she'd fly in from France? Now it's a real party, in that every single relaxation session they're booked in for dissolves into chaos. Not that "goat yoga" could really have gone any other way.
Written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (The Hangover), this is a wobbly mix of luxury resort porn and wacky comedy that never fully invests in either. Somewhat surprisingly, this is a good thing: the comedy remains at least slightly grounded, and the fancy settings are occasionally worth checking out when the laughs falter. Which they do on a regular basis.
The best thing here is the performances, which are likable across the board and (mostly) restrained enough to avoid being painful when the jokes fall flat. None of these characters have more than the one dimension, but there's just enough going on to make their predictable plights slightly engaging.
If that all sounds like damning with faint praise, that's because it is. This is a comedy that's as beige as the resort surroundings - presumably as the result of some heavy editing, as there's the occasional hint that originally things might have been a bit more out there (there's one reference to Mel bringing a lot of cocaine with her, but aside from a party montage it's never shown).
This is a film that knows its audience: middle aged people who in theory like to laugh but in practice just want to be distracted from the real world for 90 minutes or so. It's a low bar to clear, but it just about manages it. Hopefully every single person in this film got to take a break afterwards, because after this they all deserve a real holiday.
- Anthony Morris
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