A Swingers Weekend

Neither a comedy nor anything erotic, A Swingers Weekend is plagued by paper-thin characters and an unsurprising outcome.

There must be a sex-farce playbook, because A Swingers Weekend certainly seems to be following one.

May not be the most searing look at interpersonal relationships to hot big screens but an engaging cast creates and sustains enough sexual tension to keep things interesting.

There's superb dialog between the characters, and the actors dive in with charm, energy and passion.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing about A Swingers Weekend is the way it bungles a solid set-up and good beginning.

It would have been easy for filmmaker Jon E. Cohen to reduce his characters to caricatures and play them for broad laughs. But he doesn't, instead focusing on the squirm-inducing inevitability of the scenario while spotlighting deeper truths.

Through all of this, I don't think I cracked one smile, much less laughed. Which, for a comedy, I would assume is the desired effect.

No matter how you slice it, Swingers is all talk, no action.

It feels like there's an awful lot of fumbling - but on the whole, A Swingers Weekend is a nice showcase for its cast, and a trickier story than the packaging implies.