Couples Weekend Poster

Four adults navigate deception and desire when a fallen tree on New Year’s Eve triggers a chain of events that challenges their relationships.

Couples Weekend had the promise to be something so much better than what we ended up with and despite a 3-minute scene of Josh Gad losing his mind this relationship comedy is about as dry and dull as any I’ve seen for many years.

The story feels familiar straight from the off as two couples go to a mountain cabin to celebrate new years together with a little bit of infidelity thrown in for good measure.

What starts off to be something lighthearted immediately turns serious as Mitch (Josh Gad), Melanie (Ashley Park), Debs (Alexandra Daddario) and Josh (Daveed Diggs) all have to confront what has happened and the damage it has caused.

Throughout the film it’s forever darting off in another direction and never quite finds its place standing firmly undecided in what genre it wants to be and by the time the final third hits a mysterious cocktail is introduced that strips away the characters inhibitions as the truth all comes out in one weird, lucid group of scenes.

As Debs and Mitch catch their spouses cheating with one another the film could have taken a much more compelling turn as Deb wants confrontation and Mitch just wants to keep it a secret as he doesn’t want to ruin everyones lives. There’s a nice dynamic there but it gets stripped away so easily without any fight or exploration.

Couples Weekend fizzles out before it has even begun and the moonshine part of the film is just ridiculous, like the writer got bored of where the story was heading and wanted a nice easy way to wrap up what was already a poorly written and hollow storyline that for a very brief second had the potential to be a great social commentary on relationship issues.