“Why it received a green flag for production is the greatest mystery of the movie.”
Kate Stratford
2 Stars
SPA WEEKEND
Jane (the clever one), Sophie (the nice one) , Coco (the angry one) and Mel (the wild one) have been friends since high school. Now in their 40s, their “sandwich” lives leave little time for girly get-togethers. Determined to celebrate Jane’s birthday, three of them decide on a spa weekend get-away. But no-one is to tell or invite Mel, because she wrecks everything. Only nice Sophie has last minute guilts and invites Mel. Thus ensuring the weekend is a complete disaster.
I was waiting for the subverting of the trope. It never came. This was a script from the bottom drawer of some adolescent writing in the 1990s. Why it received a green flag for production is the greatest mystery of the movie. How was this film made for 2026? It treads a tired and predictable story line. Surely, surely? – there are better comedic scripts for comedic actors out there?
Isla Fischer, Leslie Mann, Michelle Buteau and Anna Faris do their botoxed, collagen injected best with this embarrassing script. They are actors with chops in the industry but nothing can save this trainwreck. Supporting actors also deliver their best but I am guessing they might want their names off the imbd credits.
The cinematography work by Danny Ruhlmann and editing by James Thomas and Delaney Del Vecchio are somewhat wasted on this script but they do make it possible to sit through. The intuitive sense of light and angle and the understanding of timing in the cutting of scenes show a mastery of the technical.
This film relies on the sort of teenage laughs of Scary Movie and American Pie. But these are not teens and the humour is adolescent, coarse and vulgar when played by actors in their 40s and 50s. The slapstick falls flat. A teenager falling out of a golf cart at high speed might be funny (?) but a middle-aged woman is cause for concern. Trashing expensive hotel rooms is no longer something on which people tend to turn an indulgent eye. There is lip service to the notion that the “sandwich” generation have no time for themselves in their lives of work and care, and that women have been taught to be nice to their own detriment, but these passages are brief and awkward. And just a little patronising.
Heard as leaving – “Was that film as dreadful as I think it was?”.
Yes.
Kate Stratford, On The Screen
