{"id":867011,"date":"2026-08-22T04:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T04:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/867011\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T04:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T04:54:09","slug":"spa-weekend-review-a-high-concept-comedy-without-the-comic-highs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/867011\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Spa Weekend’ Review: A High-Concept Comedy Without the Comic Highs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMovie genres wax and wane over time in a way that can be borderline imperceptible. The Western did its slow fade through the 1960s, but it took a while to realize that it was heading into the sunset (and then, of course, it came back). On a less exalted level, I watched \u201cSpa Weekend<\/a>\u201d and realized that the genre it\u2019s in \u2014 the high-concept comedy with the concept in the title, the movie that puts out a vibe of \u201cLook, I\u2019m crass and dumb and obvious! And that\u2019s why you like me!\u201d \u2014\u00a0may now be entering its twilight zone.<\/p>\n

\n\tWritten and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, who made the brashly clever and likable \u201cBad Moms\u201d<\/a> (but were launched by their script for \u201cThe Hangover,\u201d and in a way they\u2019re still writing it), \u201cSpa Weekend\u201d is a comedy about four old friends who go on a deluxe spa getaway. The film has its minor-league version of a star cast (Leslie Mann<\/a>, Anna Faris<\/a>, Michelle Buteau<\/a>, Isla Fisher<\/a>), with Fisher cast against type as the Melissa McCarthy character \u2014 a foul-mouthed British trainwreck in ridiculously loud clothing who becomes the film\u2019s bull in the aroma-therapy shop.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s all very standard, and the idea of putting the satirical screws to the New Age elitism of wellness culture certainly has potential. But watching \u201cSpa Weekend,\u201d you feel how tired and predictable the jokes are (it\u2019s the script that needs a massage). And I\u2019m talking about the \u201cwild\u201d jokes, like when the women take a raucous golf-cart ride through the spa grounds, or when a divorced couple work off their aggression by having a mud fight in a mud bath, or the moment when a session of \u201cgoat yoga\u201d devolves \u2014 inevitably \u2014 into a Who let the goats out? free-for-all. It\u2019s \u201canarchic\u201d yet weirdly tame and expected. You watch these rote antics and think: Where are Barb and Star when you need them?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe four women are cardboard-cutout archetypes, played in amiable lightweight fashion. There\u2019s Jane (Mann), a high-strung attorney and divorced single mother whose birthday weekend this is, and who is such an overscheduled control freak that she can only put a date with a man on her calendar three months in advance; Coco (Michelle Buteau), also divorced with two kids, who\u2019s presented as a walking fount of anger issues (though if you call her on it, she\u2019ll get angry at you for reducing her to the \u201cangry Black woman\u201d); Sophie (Anna Faris), a blonde mouse who\u2019s been the personal assistant to a tyrannical boss for 10 years; and Fisher\u2019s bawdy, antic, disheveled Mel, who the other three can\u2019t stand, but as the movie explains \u2014 it becomes a central theme \u2014 every female friend group needs one person the others secretly hate.<\/p>\n

\n\tI had mild hopes for \u201cSpa Weekend\u201d when it introduced the Solaris Eden Beach spa, a luxe white-on-white beachfront hotel that turns pampering into a form of exhibitionism. When Jane and her friends arrive at the front desk, they\u2019re offered a choice of Champagne or hibiscus water, and the spa\u2019s general manager is a guru named Shanti (Erika Keynatz) who glows with well-tended superiority. Then, of course, there\u2019s Kai (Adam Demos), the hot Aussie yoga instructor who makes instant eye contact with Jane (\u201cC\u2019mon, Magic Mike,\u201d says Mel, \u201clet\u2019s see your big ding-dong!\u201d). About 45 minutes in, Jane and Kai run into each at the otherwise empty hotel bar, and Jane explains that she can see right through the posh pretense of the spa treatments \u2014 the spaced-out music and yoga that\u2019s just \u201cstretching,\u201d the Goopy optics of it all. But it\u2019s as if the movie had already seen through its own joke.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBy all rights, Isla Fisher\u2019s Mel should be the one making us laugh. I\u2019ve always been a fan of this actor, and she gives a pinpoint performance as a dissolute narcissist who\u2019s like a more unhinged Bridget Jones. But Fisher, in a weird way, gives too grounded a performance. She doesn\u2019t have that spark plug of insanity in her DNA. (We don\u2019t feel her unconscious need to destroy.) Or maybe the lines just aren\u2019t crazy enough. Frankly, I had the same problem with \u201cThe Hangover,\u201d a movie I always thought was more prechewed than it pretended to be. And you wish \u201cSpa Weekend\u201d found a way to give Leslie Mann, the film\u2019s straight-arrow center of gravity, a bit more of a spin.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSpa Weekend\u201d is being distributed by Black Bear Pictures \u2014 a good company, only this sort of thing used to be the province of major studios, and now it\u2019s being relegated to the indie and streaming market. (See this month\u2019s \u201cSuper Troopers 3.\u201d) Nothing wrong with that, of course. But it\u2019s a sign that overly processed bad-behavior comedies like \u201cSpa Weekend\u201d are a form that\u2019s running out of gas. What happens at the spa stays at the spa. But it might as well not, since we\u2019ve seen it before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Movie genres wax and wane over time in a way that can be borderline imperceptible. The Western did…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":867012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[44871,49,48,75,67733,70222,301178,337,301179],"class_list":["post-867011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-anna-faris","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-isla-fisher","tag-leslie-mann","tag-michelle-buteau","tag-movies","tag-spa-weekend"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=867011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/867012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}