Released this week on DVD: "Couples Retreat"

Grade: D

If I were a marriage counselor, and if I ran an exotic resort for couples looking to solidify their relationship, I wouldn’t hire a half-baked yoga instructor (Carlos Ponce) to perform tantric humping maneuvers on discontented wives. At least, not while their husbands are watching.

Then again, that’s one of the funnier bits in Couples Retreat, a marriage-renewal comedy with a decent cast, a few good ideas and no clear grasp on what to do with them. On paper, the notion of eight friends — four miserable couples — trapped in paradise with a bunch of control-freak therapists holds some promise.

Two of the friends are Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, domesticated into frumpy suburban husbands. Malin Akerman plays Vaughn’s wife, Kristin Davis plays Favreau’s. The remaining two couples are Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell, as anal compulsives on the brink of splitting up, and Faizon Love and Kali Hawk as a divorced buddy and his amusingly vacant 20-year-old girlfriend.

The anal couple have convinced the others to spend a week at Eden Resorts, a getaway that promises Jet Skis and snorkeling alongside therapeutic counseling. But when they get there, they meet a supercilious Brit (Peter Serafinowicz) in a blue safari jacket who lays out the rules. It seems the counseling starts at 6 a.m., attendance required.

All of this might add up to an amusing romp, but director Peter Billingsley runs out of gas in every scene. Gags start out well enough and then deflate, leaking air with an almost audible hiss. The whole thing is fuddled with schmaltz; it’s the sort of movie that brings in the maudlin clarinet just as a troubled husband bemoans the loss of that lovin’ feeling.

The pacing, the acting, the editing — it’s all slapdash, a clumsy excuse for unfunny erection jokes and breathtaking Polynesian vistas. Too bad the movie is spoiling the view.