Spa Weekend, written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, the duo behind The Hangover screenplay and Bad Moms, opens in theatres on August 21 through Black Bear Pictures. The R-rated comedy stars Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher, Michelle Buteau and Anna Faris as four childhood best friends who plan a luxurious spa getaway, deliberately leaving out the group’s most chaotic member, Mel, played by Fisher.
When Mel inevitably shows up anyway, the weekend unravels into increasingly wild chaos. The premise is clear, the cast is talented, and the directors know how to make films like this. The problem, according to most critics, is that they have made this one before and made it better.
Jane, played by Leslie Mann, is the group’s organiser, the one who plans the birthday spa trip and makes the call to leave Mel out. Sophie, played by Anna Faris, and Coco, played by Michelle Buteau, go along with the plan despite their misgivings. Mel, a foul-mouthed, outrageously dressed British trainwreck described by The Hollywood Reporter as “the Melissa McCarthy character,” crashes the getaway and throws everything into beautiful disorder.
As the weekend spirals through mud baths, golf cart chases, couples’ therapy activities and various other spa-adjacent disasters, the film attempts to balance raucous set pieces with a more emotional undercurrent about what it means to stay friends with someone who consistently makes everything harder.
The critical response to Spa Weekend sits at approximately 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, a score that reflects a film that has found both defenders and detractors in roughly equal measure. The Hollywood Reporter’s Sheri Linden described it as evoking “the aura of letdown surrounding” a luxury trip that looked better in the brochure, acknowledging the formula’s successful track record with Bridesmaids, Girls Trip and Bad Moms while arguing this entry is the “creatively uninspired” version of the equation.
Variety’s Owen Gleiberman was similarly pointed, calling the script “tired and predictable” and noting that the idea of satirising the New Age elitism of wellness culture has real potential, but that the film’s jokes feel like they need their own massage.
IndieWire took a more generous position, acknowledging the film is “messy and unhinged” but arguing it is “sometimes funny” and that fans of the directors’ previous work will likely enjoy it, crediting the central foursome for holding the film together “even when it goes, often worryingly, off the rails.”
The Irish Times took the most critical view, drawing comparisons to Bridesmaids to the film’s significant disadvantage, noting that the film never comes close to the borderline-transgressive sequences that made those touchstones memorable, and that its greatest sin is not being offensive but being inoffensive.
The most consistent talking point across reviews is Isla Fisher’s performance as Mel, a role that places her firmly against type. Variety described her as “the bull in the aroma-therapy shop,” a foul-mouthed British trainwreck in ridiculously loud clothing. The Hollywood Reporter noted she is playing “the Melissa McCarthy character,” which is a compliment to her energy and a gentle critique of the film’s reliance on a formula that already has a more famous practitioner.
IndieWire noted the central foursome hold the film together through star power alone, and several reviews singled out Fisher’s commitment to the physical comedy and her obvious enjoyment of a character very different from the ones she usually plays.
Leslie Mann, as the group’s reliable planner, delivers what The Hollywood Reporter called a “minor-league star” turn, familiar and warm without being particularly surprising. Michelle Buteau’s Coco has drawn the most specific praise of the four leads. The Irish Times singled out her “decent old-lady gags about her former partner’s superannuated girlfriend” as the film’s closest brush with the kind of sharp, transgressive comedy it promises. Anna Faris, as the quietly put-upon Sophie, is described across reviews as dependable rather than standout, a skilled comedian working within a character that does not give her enough to do.
The central critical complaint across nearly every review lands on the screenplay. Variety described it as a film whose “script needs a massage,” arguing that even the “wild” jokes, like the golf cart chase through the spa grounds, land as predictable rather than inspired.
The Hollywood Reporter pointed to the film’s inability to decide whether it wants to be a raucous comedy or an emotionally grounded story about female friendship in middle age and argued it does neither convincingly enough to justify the runtime. The Irish Times’ observation that the film would be hard to describe as offensive is perhaps the most damning for a comedy from the writers of The Hangover; toothlessness is its own kind of failure.
IndieWire noted the film was shot in Queensland, Australia, despite being set approximately 100 miles from Los Angeles, and that almost everyone has an Australian accent, with nobody in the film appearing to notice. It is a minor production quirk that several critics mentioned as a sign of the film’s general disregard for realism in favour of atmosphere.
Spa Weekend is the kind of film that will find its audience on a Friday night with low expectations and a glass of wine, which is not nothing, and several critics acknowledged as much. The cast is genuinely likeable, the setting is appealing, and there are enough scattered laughs to make the 90-something minutes pass pleasantly. But for a film from the writers of The Hangover and the directors of Bad Moms, pleasant is a disappointing ceiling. As The Hollywood Reporter put it, these funny women deserve a much better break.
Watch Spa Weekend Trailer
Film Details: Spa Weekend
Directors: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
Writers: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
Cast: Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher, Michelle Buteau, Anna Faris
Genre: Comedy
Rating: R
Production: Black Bear Pictures, Team Todd
Distributor: Black Bear Pictures
Release Date: August 21, 2026
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