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By James Rocchi
Special to MSN Movies
It is hard (if not impossible) to deal with the internal ethical, intellectual and professional contradictions you feel when you step onto a beach in French Polynesia contemplating how you're there on a studio's dime to conduct interviews with the stars of a movie you know, deep in your heart, that you're going to give a mixed review. The great film critic Pauline Kael said there are two kinds of writing about movies: a good, honest review; and everything else, which is just publicity. And if you write and do interviews, set visits or other things that aren't under the umbrella of good, honest reviews (and these days, if you're lucky, reviews are just one part of your paycheck as a freelance film critic and journalist), then why not do them well, and with courtesy, and, in this case, for the upcoming Universal release "Couples Retreat," in the Polynesian beauty of Bora Bora?
The logic, for Universal Pictures, must have gone something like this: "We just made a comedy in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Why not do the press where we shot it, instead of in front of some fake palm fronds at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons?" This is excellent reasoning (although I hope Paramount doesn't apply it for its upcoming "Shutter Island"), and so, I (along with regional and network-level entertainment reporters from TV stations, networks and online outlets all over North America) was invited to Bora Bora to have some fun and, yes, work in the sun.
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It also should be said that there are plenty of things "Couples Retreat" gets right: From Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell's relationship to how there are jokes about marriage in it but that none of the marriages in it are jokes. And sure, yes, why not talk about these things with its stars on a fine-grained white-sand shore? I have friends who've attended festivals on that festival's dime (as have I). Press accreditation as a critic means you see movies for free that the average moviegoer pays $12 a pop. And it also means you have to see films involving fat suits or talking animals or sexy assassins or Rob Schneider in ethnic garb. It's already a complicated, privileged job. Going to Bora Bora is just one more cool, complicated privilege.
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