Let me start out with 2 notes before I bash Marriage Retreat: 1) I'm a Christian, so I'm not bashing that this movie has a religious message, and 2) I haven't seen this in many years, maybe 6 or 7, but I still remember a thing or 2 about Marriage Retreat.
PureFlix, the company most reviled for God's Not Dead and Unplanned, ripped off Fireproof from The Kendrick Brothers. I actually like Fireproof, but this rip-off is not good.
The plot follows some church-going married couples. Reginald VelJohnson, the African American officer from Die Hard, plays the preacher of the church.
The Pastor advertises to the married couples in the congregation about Marriage Retreat, a camp-like place in the mountains that helps repair broken marriages. The couples don't want to go, as they think their marriages are fine. However, they decide to go- and there they realize that they did in fact need the help.
The place Marriage Retreat works like marriage counseling and a vacation place all in one. There are counselors who sit down a spouse one by one- a personal talk for a husband, and one for a wife.
I'm all for marriage counseling, don't get me wrong, but the couples need to open up to counselors themselves. The counselors at Marriage Retreat forces them to talk and give personal information.
For example, one woman talks to a wife and coaxes her to admit that she is pregnant and that she hasn't told her husband, who didn't want to have kids.
It's just creepy, and rude if you ask me. The movie should have been about these couples seeing a real counselor in a therapy building, and not strangers begging for this information.
That right there summarizes the issue with Marriage Retreat. It's a poorly told and creepy story that shows that even in the early days Pure Flix only cared about messages more than well made movies with well told stories.
Honestly, this movie could break more marriages than make them.
Reverse Recommendations: For a better Christian movie about a broken marriage, see Fireproof. It's no masterpiece, but it's much better.
Also, for a secular alternative, see American Beauty. Honestly, even with all the sinful content, that could be used to discuss the dangers of a self-centered marriage rather than a Christ-centered one.
