RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 3 sourcesA little ways into the comedy Spa Weekend , characters played by Anna Faris and Isla Fisher sit down for a quiet chat about their lives. It should be the underused-comic-actress equivalent of the diner scene from Heat —or, if that sounds too lofty, at least a distaff version of any number of moments where Fisher’s Wedding Crashers co-stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson riff off each other. The scene is indeed a highlight of a noisy, rambling Spa Weekend ; Mel (Fisher) claims to have gotten rich by investing in “reverse crypto” while Sophie (Faris) reacts to her wilder friend with her signature wide-eyed daze. (Later in the movie, she has a vintage Faris line reading: “I feel like I just drank an entire soda.”) Their encounter is not fall-down hilarious—despite Faris’ established skills in the area of falling down—but Fisher and Faris briefly get a comfy little rhythm going. There’s a shared and unforced silliness between two go-for-broke comedians.
Mainly, then, the scene throws into sharp relief what a burden both actresses carry throughout the movie, even without the hinderance of playing Serious Romantic Scenes, a requirement their fellow weekenders Leslie Mann and Michelle Buteau must unfortunately fulfill. The movie starts with the kind of generic young-friends-cavorting footage that functions as a countdown to awkward expositional voiceover. Sure enough Jane (Mann) pipes in to explain that she, Sophie, Mel, and Coco (Buteau) have been friends all their lives before growing apart thanks to various responsibilities including kids, work, and, in Mel’s case, a tornado-like personality that the other three have backed away from over the years. (She’s first seen, as a teenage girl, cheerfully stealing a Mercedes for a joyride.) When Sophie, Coco, and Jane agree to treat themselves to a relaxing spa weekend for Jane’s birthday, Sophie privately has a last-minute attack of guilt and invites Mel at the last minute, hoping she won’t actually be able to make it. Obviously she does, loudly and with a cigarette in hand, threatening the middle-aged tranquility the other three are temporarily able to achieve.
Mel is supposed to serve as the generator of comic friction; she also provides a convenient buffer so that the movie doesn’t have to actually satirize much about the exceedingly moneyed culture of expensive spa vacations. In one scene, Jane does voice some over-it skepticism about the supposed healing power of spas, only to have her resistance overcome by sexy yoga instructor Kai (Adam Demos), offering her a hand massage. It’s a cute-enough moment in a movie starved for them, but contributes to an overall difficulty discerning whether the movie is engaging in promotion of a real spa. “Solaris” branding is all over the facilities without any kind of comic elaboration that might accompany a fake brand (and sadly, no guests appear to be visited by their dead loved ones ). Characters also make suspiciously ad-copy-adjacent exclamations like “everything is so new and so clean!” Yet with Canada seemingly subbing for Southern California, and with amply green-screened scenery in a waterfront-set resort movie with no real beach scenes, it doesn’t seem like the actresses are shilling for a real location.
“Shilling for nothing” is an apt description of Spa Weekend in general. The characters have little convincing inner life or sustained comic interplay. Buteau motormouths her way through the lion’s share of what sounds like improv, though it’s always hard to tell with writing-directing team Jon Lucas and Scott Moore whether they’re engaging in genuinely lazy writing or passing the buck to their actors via lazy directing. Whatever the reason, Spa Weekend is heavy on pointing-things-out humor (that was creepy; that was bad; that was crazy!) and even heavier on Fisher yelling bad words (bitches; sluts; motherfuckers) meant affectionately.
Mel’s outlandishness winds up the most casually believable of the bunch, simply because it’s hard to tell what might be a party-girl act. Nerdy, married-with-children Sophie making a living as the put-upon near-slave of a callow rich guy, for example, makes vastly less sense; not a good gag, not the kind of background writing that stems from any recent experience in the actual job market. (Mostly, it feels like writer-director bros elbowing the audience as if to say, “Am I right, ladies?!”) Mann, meanwhile, is told so frequently that she’s hot, toned, and in-demand that she might be ready to appear in a Nancy Meyers movie as an ultra-talented divorced woman.
Look, it’s not the actors’ fault. Lucas and Moore have a more comedy-forward core cast than their Bad Moms series, to which this feels like a more divorce-heavy companion piece, but their staging is so scattershot that the big comic set pieces all play like variations on the same weak Saturday Night Live sketch: What if a woman were to act inappropriately at a spa activity?! Everyone throws themselves into the chaos, but even Fisher is frequently defeated by the faux-wildness of this material, bitches ! She and Faris remain underused, but contra Spa Weekend ’s implications, throwing a bunch of money at them for a lush getaway doesn’t change that.
Director: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
Writers: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
Starring: Leslie Mann, Michelle Buteau, Anna Faris, Isla Fisher, Adam Demos, Dominic Ona-Ariki
Release Date: August 21, 2026
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