Two millennial couples find their relationships in ruins after a holiday trip to a remote cabin leads to an infidelity scandal that rocks the core of each one of them. The premise of Couples Weekend feels like it’s been done to death. Infidelity in filmmaking is a cheap source of drama that often feels like one of Hollywood’s moral wrongs. We’ve seen this setup a hundred times before, usually devolving into predictable shouting matches and soapy hysterics. But thanks to a strong cast and a wickedly fun script by Nora Kirkpatrick, this film rises above its misgivings to deliver a solid chamber comedy.
Couples Weekend Review
We’re introduced to our couples as four very different characters. Alexandra Daddario plays an introverted author with her hot, hip boyfriend, played by Daveed Diggs. On the other side of the cabin, Ashley Park is an ambitious younger woman whose relationship with her oafish Josh Gad counterpart seems destined to fail from the moment they arrive. The premise leads you along this path, making you wonder who’s gonna cheat on whom, but the answer is obvious. The two hip, younger people, Diggs and Park, are spotted making out in the snow, while Daddario and Gad’s characters take a quiet walk together. The betrayal is swift, setting the stage for the chaotic fallout.
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From here, Couples Weekend becomes a pressure-cooker chamber piece. After being snowed in, the couples have to reckon with the shattered state of their own relationships. Tensions brew from a slow simmer to a full-out shout, and this is where the performances from Gad and Daddario shine. Gad is annoying in his usual way. He’s loud and obnoxious, but he also plays his frustration with remarkable realism. Watching him melt down powers the film’s comedy. Daddario, too, being a more introverted character, shines through these moments of stillness, making her eventual eruption captivating on screen. She anchors the madness with frantic sincerity.
Ashley Park and Diggs are sidelined in their roles. The film, of course, revolves heavily around Daddario and Gad as they deal with the immediate trauma of their relationship issues. Park and Diggs have to step back because they play their roles with the specific embarrassment that happens when you’re caught dead to rights and found to be in the wrong. They spend the runtime walking on eggshells, a dynamic that adds a thick layer of awkward tension to every room they walk into.
Perhaps it’s that Kirkpatrick believes cheating is one of the moral ineptitudes in a relationship. It’s something uniquely wrong and damaging, but also something that can supposedly be forgiven. In so many ways, this feels like a cheap way to avoid other moral issues that characters in a modern romance might face. The film tries to piece together why we should believe people are able to overcome adultery, and yet it feels like a moral question that doesn’t need to be answered over and over.
Kirkpatrick isn’t necessarily saying anything new, and she gives her characters too much credit. Not everybody has to be forgiven, and sometimes relationships fall apart. So maybe the moral questions she’s pursuing aren’t profound, but Couples Weekend has an undeniably funny script, packed with solid moments from each member of the cast.
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It helps immensely that the technical execution makes a thinly plotted film feel much more interesting. The claustrophobic cabin, where our characters are trapped, feels like a living, breathing character in the script. This atmosphere is enforced by a strong sense of editing and a slick visual style behind the scenes. If there’s one skill that every simple, single-location film needs to have, it’s brevity. The whip-smart pacing of Kirkpatrick’s direction creates a relentless sense of fun, letting you keep rolling with the punches as the story delivers blow after blow.
Is Couples Weekend worth watching?
The at-first seemingly inevitable conclusion is slightly twisted by Couples Weekend’s third act, which gets metaphorical and feels as if Kirkpatrick is trying to make something feel fresh and original when she doesn’t necessarily believe it. Every film presents a unique question its audience is supposed to answer, and there’s a lingering sense that Kirkpatrick wasn’t ever quite able to achieve that deeper resonance. She directed something highly fun and entertaining, but perhaps slightly shallow at its core. Outside of the strong performances from a great theatrical cast, the movie struggles to land its final emotional punch, but the ride there is still well worth the trip.
Couples Weekend releases in theaters and on video on demand on June 8.
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