The 40-Year-Old-Virgin has been a hard act to follow. The film which launched Steve Carell into the public consciousness is arguably Judd Apatow’s best film – an opinion often shared by audiences and critics alike. What made it so good was its ability to simultaneously juggle being both a raunchy, adult comedy as well as being a film that says something relevant about relationships. The result was a truly authentic movie which resonated with people of all ages.

It’s “been a hard act to follow” because it seems that many films made since then (Apatow’s included) have tried to recreate that magic, to no avail. Jason Segel-catapulting, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, probably comes the closest. She’s Out of My League tries its damndest to follow suit, but unfortunately, all we get is an unfunny, Frankenstein-like mess of raunch meets innocent romantic comedy.

Kirk (Jay Baruchel) is a regular guy whom his friends describe as a “5” (on the famous 10-point scale of hotness). When Molly (Alice Eve), a “hard 10”, begins flirting with, and subsequently asking out, Kirk, the story follows the adventures of what would happen if a ‘10’ went for a ‘5’. Of course, what’s funny about this premise is that pretty much every romantic comedy stars some guy ‘5’ ending up with a ‘10’ girl, but let’s just pretend like this movie was the first to come up with the idea and move on.

As mentioned before, the film ends up being a strange hybrid of inconsistent moods and theme. One scene is a sweet moment of Kirk revealing his insecurity to Molly, the next is a scene of Kirk’s friend shaving his testicles for him (don’t ask – it didn’t really make sense even in the context of the movie). This split personality of tone is the movie’s main downfall, because if it had simply picked a direction and ran with it, it might have ended up being much better. One might say, watchable.

As it is, the writing isn’t exactly able to carry the film and the movie is only held together by Baruchel’s charm. He’s a solid actor who is great in other films, but he simply doesn’t have the right script this time around to really break out. Putting him at the helm of a better movie will, no doubt, really kick start this guy’s career. Eve is certainly charming enough as Molly. Usually in these sorts of movies, the “hot girl” is just a laughing sidekick to the main “funny guy” – a sounding board for him to bounce his jokes off of, essentially. It’s nice to see that her character is written to be the smartest person in the room and not just a pretty face.

However, despite all that collective charm, the supposed chemistry between these two characters is just not believable. Every scene where they make out, or do anything besides banter back and forth, was just…creepy. Maybe it’s just hard for me to make the leap that any woman would find neurotic twitchiness to be a turn-on, but then again, Woody Allen has been making movies for years.

In the end, She’s Out of My League tries to be too many styles of comedy, and consequently, succeeds at none. Molly may be a solid 10, but this film is nowhere near that.

Do you constantly find yourself snooping through your friends’ pictures on Facebook after they just got back from vacation? Does the thought of people with relationship issues whinging and bitching in therapy sound like a pure blast of awesome? My friend, have I got a movie for you!

Couple’s Retreat is yet another collaboration between Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau. The Swingers duo have been pretty much inseparable since their 1996 debut, and this 2009 release shows no sign of them stopping anytime soon.

Staring down the barrel of a divorce, Jason and Cynthia (Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell) hope to attend a couple’s resort paradise to fix their marriage. The only snag? It apparently costs a crazy amount of money. However, if they can convince their fellow couple friends to go (Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn and others), the group rate will put their adventure-in-monogamy nicely into a more comfortable price range.

So, convince the friends they do, and then it’s off to a random tropical destination. However, the extra couples soon discover that the therapy sessions they thought were optional are incredibly mandatory and the wild partying a bit of a no-no. So, with our would-be vacationers forced to attend couple’s therapy, problems emerge, tension is created, and hilariousness is assured. Hmm. Not so much the last one? Well two out of three ain’t bad.

The film simply is not funny. Sure, there is a random chuckle here and there, but all in all, the 113 minutes of run time are fairly dry and rely on the audience to equate absurd situations to side-splitting humour. A heavy emphasis of the script is placed on Vaughn’s usual brand of rambling shtick, but despite the multitude of words vomiting out of his mouth, Vaughn never actually says anything funny.

All of this is actually quite a shame because Couple’s Retreat is a film that showed a lot of promise from the trailer. The premise seemed likeable enough, and set against a beautiful tropical setting with a group of familiar faces, the assurance of a fairly enjoyable movie was pretty much assumed. But how wrong we were. Oh how wrong we were.

The couples themselves have passable chemistry, with Vince Vaughn and Malin Akerman being the most believable. As well, Favreau and Vaughn bring their real-life comradery to the screen and most of the scenes with the two ex-Swingers work because of it. However, these occasional moments of charm were hardly enough to patch together a poorly written script, and even the most diehard Vaughn fan will be left wanting.

Overall, Couple’s Retreat feels like a good premise executed poorly. Perhaps Favreau should have watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall before penning this little masterwork (you know, that other tropical rom-com starring Kristen Bell). I can’t help but feel that if he did, a genuine laugh or two would have resulted and I wouldn’t be left wondering what else I could have done in the nearly two hours I wasted on this film.

I hear snorting Pop-Tarts is quite the trip.