Folks, I’ll be honest with you–I know, aren’t I usually?–but I’ll tell you right off the bad that Couples Retreat is not the kind of movie I usually go to the theater for.

Frankly, a movie like this, you don’t HAVE to.  There are no big special effects, no huge crashes of audio, nothing that would necessitate a screen measured in feet and a speaker count that requires you to take off your shoes to match the count. But the really interesting part about Couples Retreat is that you’ll WANT to.

Somewhere out there, there are four groups of friends, and their marriages frankly have seen better days.  One of them, a hard-charging type-A couple that is almost incapable of carrying on a conversation without Powerpoint, is actually inches from divorce.  And to that end, they’re seeking therapy at an island resort called Eden.  But Eden doesn’t come cheap, and as such, the type-A excelsior couple wants to enlist its circle of friends to go on a package deal, which is significantly cheaper.  Lured by promises of sun and frolic, the other couples retreat, and discover a whole lot about themselves, their partners, and their lives.

There are several moments in this movie that can really only be described as awkward.  Faizon Love naked, for example.  A day at the spa.  A really uncomfortable yoga sequence.  Some moments in here break open the awkward scale and segue into creepy.

But there are also a lot of good laughs to be had here, and some poignant bits that’ll actually make you think.  Couples out there…how much of your life is “his” and “hers” and how much of it is “ours”?  It’s a question to ask, for anyone who’s ever been or ever thought about being in a relationship.  You would not think of me, a man who can pummel virtually any horror movie trivia into the very ground, as a person to enjoy a romantic comedy, but Couples Retreat qualified.  It was funny, it made me think a bit, it gave me Vince Vaughn as a dad, there’s plenty of great points here.

Of course, I also got to watch a four year old thoroughly use a display toilet in a home improvement store.  Twice.   And that’s something you never want to see.

The Screenhead Ten Scale is prepared to sift through a bit of dross for some comedy silver, and understands that getting laughs is downright important.  Despite the awkwardness, it hands over a seven out of ten for being a thoroughly satisfactory comedy with its share of rough spots.