From left, Joey (Jon Favreau), Ronnie (Malin Akerman), Dave (Vince Vaughn) Shane (Faizon Love) and Lucy (Kristin Davis) visit a tropical retreat that includes compulsory therapy in the comedy Couples Retreat. (Universal Pictures)

The fall season has already given us a highbrow date movie for 20-somethings: Jane Campion's exquisite Bright Star. Now it's time for a middlebrow date movie for the middle-aged: the middling new comedy Couples Retreat.

There are half-hearted gags about masturbation and getting aroused during a massage that feel like a sop to audiences expecting Apatow-style raunch.

If you're looking to get away from the kids for a few hours, enjoy a few moderate laughs and have your belief in marriage reaffirmed without thinking about it, this is the movie for you. It's also a good choice for sociology professors seeking a tidy illustration of the Hollywood body-image double standard. Just check out the early beach scene where a bunch of married Americans in their 30s and 40s strip down to their briefs. The guys, realistically, run from paunchy to portly; their slim, bikini-clad wives, meanwhile, look like they spend every spare minute at the gym. Apparently, we're on Male Fantasy Island.

Actually, the island is called Eden and it's a tropical resort with a twist. Along with the standard mai tais and luaus, married guests are also treated to couples therapy. Jason (Jason Bateman) and Cynthia (Kristen Bell), whose fertility problems have put them on the brink of divorce, are there in a last-ditch attempt to save their marriage. To get a group rate on the retreat, they've roped in their friends: spouses Dave (Vince Vaughn) and Ronnie (Malin Akerman); Joey (Jon Favreau) and Lucy (Kristin Davis); and divorced buddy Shane (Faizon Love) and his new 20-year-old girlfriend, Trudy (Kali Hawk).

Jason has failed to tell them the therapy is compulsory, but after their first taste of Eden – a gourmet feast in its four-star restaurant – the other couples are willing to try it. "How bad can it really be?" asks Dave.

By then, it's obvious they could all work on their relationships. Ronnie and Dave are so distracted juggling kids, jobs and kitchen renovations that they're no longer on the same page. Lucy and Joey, once high-school sweethearts, are now bored, bitter and toying with infidelity. Shane is fooling himself as he struggles to keep up with party-girl Trudy, who doesn't know why he winces every time she calls him "Daddy."

Eden's renowned "couples whisperer," Monsieur Marcel (a sly Jean Reno), promises to help them all with his weird, New Age-y program. It includes a beach strip-down (an embarrassment for poor Shane, who decided to go commando that day); counselling sessions with some oddball therapists; and a yoga class led by a Fabio-like Adonis (Carlos Ponce) whose intimate positions are less hatha and more Kama Sutra.

Dave (Vince Vaughn, left) and Ronnie (Malin Akerman) get counselling in Couples Retreat. (Universal Pictures)

Favreau, Vaughn and Dana Fox (who co-wrote the screenplay), along with director Peter Billingsley, are clearly aiming for a gentle comedy that makes some valid points while delivering the funny. The result can be confusing, particularly in the scenes with Dave and Ronnie's bullying therapist (John Michael Higgins), whose manner is insightful one minute and hilariously inappropriate the next.

More often, though, the movie is just innocuous. There are half-hearted gags about masturbation and getting aroused during a massage (both involving Favreau's horn-dog Joey) that feel like a sop to audiences expecting some Judd Apatow-style raunch. Ponce's sexy-yoga shtick is milked for every one of its meagre laughs. Meanwhile, the efforts to examine common marital pitfalls – poor communication, lack of empathy – are undercut by quick-fix resolutions.

The picture is really at its best when it's echoing earlier Vaughn-Favreau collaborations like Made (2001) and, particularly, Swingers (1996), the influential guy comedy that launched both their careers. As Dave, Vaughn gets to fly off on several of his signature circuitous riffs, the funniest being his overblown histrionics after a minor brush-up with a shark. Later, there's a clever spoof-western Guitar Hero showdown, with Dave trying to out-solo the resort's unctuous British host on a Billy Squier tune. It could be a nod to the hockey video-game scene in Swingers. It's certainly a shameless example of product placement.

Those scenes don't have anything to do with marriage and relationships, though. And it doesn't say much that the couple with the most chemistry here are Vaughn and Favreau. The two work up their old comic magic when Joey has a heart-to-heart with Dave that winds up sounding unintentionally homoerotic.

Apart from that, Favreau is singularly unlikable as the boorish Joey. You don't blame his wife for going on the prowl. As Lucy, Davis – prissy Charlotte of Sex and the City – has some fun subverting her good-girl image and flirting with Ponce's Harlequin hunk. Bateman also has his moments as a control freak who deals with life crises by making PowerPoint presentations of them. Akerman and Love bring little to their perky-housewife and good-natured-black-guy stereotypes. Bell, last seen in a tropical setting as the eponymous heartbreaker of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, seems to be here mainly to show off her assets in a pair of wet shorts.

It's Vaughn's film, though, and the big guy is in good form. Only, like a long marriage, his career is starting to get in a rut. Maybe it's time he considered a trial separation from the relationship comedy.

Couples Retreat opens Oct. 9.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.