Overview
- Spa Weekend opened in U.S. theaters on Friday, Aug. 21, giving audiences a glossy, R-rated comedy built around four lifelong friends who take a chaotic spa retreat.
- The film stars Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher, Michelle Buteau and Anna Faris and was written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore with producer Suzanne Todd and Black Bear Pictures.
- Production took place on Australia’s Gold Coast and was halted for three days during a cyclone, an episode the cast says tightened their off-screen bonds and fed into the film’s on-screen chemistry.
- Early reviews praise the leads’ chemistry and highlight a crowd-pleasing blooper reel, while many critics fault the movie’s thin script, uneven tone and reliance on broad set pieces such as strippers, drugs and goat yoga.
- Lucas and Moore frame the film as an attempt to bring back broad, female-led comedies, and its performance and audience response may influence whether studios greenlight similar crowd-focused women’s comedies.