Spa Weekend
When mums go away, apparently good behaviour stays at home.
20 Aug 2026 
Russ Matthews Motherhood, careers, relationships and the endless responsibilities of adulthood can leave little room for friendship, let alone a weekend away. Spa Weekend takes that familiar reality and gives it the Bad Moms treatment, asking what happens when four long-time friends trade responsibility for bathrobes, relaxation and an increasingly questionable collection of decisions. There should be plenty of comedic potential here, but unfortunately this getaway proves that not every trip to the spa leaves you feeling refreshed.
Jane, Coco and Sophie head to a luxury retreat hoping to escape the pressures of everyday life and reconnect with one another. Their carefully planned weekend takes a dramatic turn when their chaotic friend Mel unexpectedly joins them, transforming pampering into pandemonium. Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher, Michelle Buteau and Anna Faris lead this tale of four high-school friends who have grown up, moved into very different seasons of life and discover that maintaining a friendship can be considerably harder than starting one.
Admittedly, I am probably not the target audience for Spa Weekend. The more difficult question is determining who actually is. If there is an audience, it may be women yearning for their own version of The Hangover. Hotel rooms get trashed, goat yoga goes spectacularly wrong and the English language is creatively employed in ways that could make a longshoreman blush. There seems to be no depth this screenplay won’t descend to in search of another laugh. Except, strangely, there weren’t many laughs in our screening.
This talented quartet commits wholeheartedly to the material, but enthusiasm can only carry a screenplay so far. The outrageous situations become increasingly unbelievable, while the characters themselves begin to feel more like comedic constructions than people who might actually exist. What starts as a potentially relatable story about maintaining friendships through different stages of adulthood becomes another exercise in seeing how badly middle-aged adults can behave before the credits roll.
There is a whisper of something worthwhile underneath it all. These women genuinely yearn for connection. Their lives have changed, their priorities have shifted and the friendships they once took for granted now require considerably more effort. There is something painfully relatable about discovering that people who were inseparable in high school can struggle to remain connected decades later. Unfortunately, Spa Weekend merely nods towards this idea before returning to the next outrageous gag.
Had the filmmakers trusted the humanity of these women, there might have been a funny and surprisingly moving film about friendship, ageing and the need to be known by people who remember who we were before careers, marriages and children changed everything. Instead, those moments are buried beneath coarse language, sexual references and increasingly ridiculous antics. Perhaps there is a niche audience waiting for Spa Weekend. Everyone else may discover that this is one getaway best left off the itinerary.
What should parents know?
Despite the seemingly harmless title, Spa Weekend is firmly adult entertainment. The film contains pervasive coarse language, sexual references and mature humour alongside drug and alcohol-related material and deliberately outrageous behaviour. This isn’t a mother-daughter spa outing for younger viewers, and parents should not mistake the friendship-centred premise for family entertainment.
REEL DIALOGUE: Are you the friend nobody likes?
Ouch.
Spa Weekend leans surprisingly hard into an uncomfortable aspect of friendship: What happens when one person becomes increasingly difficult to have around?
Most of us want friends who encourage us, support us and remain beside us through life’s difficult seasons. Yet friendship is a two-way relationship. What happens when someone’s behaviour continually hurts the people closest to them?
The Bible doesn’t define friendship as blindly supporting everything another person does.
Paul encourages Christians to speak “the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). Proverbs is even more confronting:
“Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.” – Proverbs 27:6
Sometimes being a good friend means having the courage to say what another person doesn’t want to hear.
That doesn’t mean abandoning people when they struggle. Friendship also requires patience, forgiveness and remaining beside someone when life becomes messy. The challenge is learning the difference between loving someone and enabling destructive behaviour.
Yet even our closest human friendships have limitations.
Friends disappoint us. People move away. Relationships change. Sometimes those we thought would always be there simply aren’t.
Jesus offers something different.
Before his crucifixion, he told his disciples, “I have called you friends” (John 15:15). These were the same people who would misunderstand him, disappoint him and, in Peter’s case, deny even knowing him.
Still, Jesus loved them.
Perhaps Spa Weekend accidentally stumbles onto something worth considering beneath all its excess. We need people willing to stay beside us, but we also need friends courageous enough to tell us when we’re wrong.
And when every earthly friendship inevitably proves imperfect, Christians can know there is one friend whose faithfulness never changes.
Where to look for more details: Proverbs 17:17; Proverbs 27:5–6; Ephesians 4:15; John 15:12–15; Hebrews 13:5.
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