The Spa Weekend cast friendship (both on screen and off) sits at the heart of a new slapstick comedy that its stars are calling ‘mom porn,’ and which is scheduled to arrive in cinemas on 21 August 2026, according to Wikipedia. Running at 97 minutes, the film throws Anna Faris, Leslie Mann, Michelle Buteau and Isla Fisher into a luxury wellness retreat where, as the premise insists, everything that can go wrong, does.
Four Women, One Wellness Retreat, and a Lot of Topless Men
Faris plays Sophie, a gloriously goofy PA working for a billionaire. Mann is Jane, an ambitious lawyer who has made zero room in her life for romance. Buteau is Coco, an outspoken mom of two who is decidedly not thrilled that her ex-husband has moved on. And Fisher is Mel, the group’s chaotic wild card, whose aggressively unfiltered approach to life keeps the other three permanently on edge. Into this mix steps Kai, played by Adam Demos, an extremely attentive yoga instructor who sets his sights on Jane and provides, Fisher noted at a press event in Las Vegas, a considerable quantity of shirtless scenery.
‘There’s a lot of topless men in the movie, which I feel like we’re really brushing over,’ Fisher told the cast’s interviewer. ‘Don’t worry. We didn’t give them any dialogue. They won’t make you laugh, but my god, you’re gonna enjoy them. You’re welcome by the way.’
Mann’s summary was more economical: ‘Mom porn.’ The room, apparently, agreed.
The film is drawing inevitable comparisons to The Hangover, and there is a structural reason for that. According to Deadline, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, who wrote and directed Spa Weekend, are the same writers behind The Hangover. But where that film leant heavily on escalating male catastrophe, this one is more interested in the slow archaeology of female friendship: what gets buried, what resurfaces, and whether the group can accept one member whose chaos impedes everyone else’s fun.
The Spa Weekend Cast on Friendship, Ambition and Cutting People Off
Speaking to Refinery29 in Las Vegas, the cast was candid about why that theme felt timely. Buteau made the case plainly: ‘It’s really easy to cut people off and avoid that conversation and confrontation, but your friends aren’t disposable. They were your friends for a reason. You can take a break, but come back to it and have a conversation.’ Faris added that friendship, when it runs deep enough, does something more structural: ‘You need friends to help remind you of your own potential.’
Fisher’s character Mel is, refreshingly, not asked to learn anything by the final act. ‘She doesn’t change. That’s my favourite thing about comedy characters,’ Fisher said. ‘They start the movie a certain way, they end a certain way. They don’t learn anything, they don’t grow. Everybody else bends to them, and that is the dream role.’ The Spa Weekend cast friendship dynamic extends beyond the screen: the four share a group chat called ‘Spa Beauties,’ whose profile picture, it emerged in conversation, features one of the Hemsworth brothers. Nobody was entirely sure which one.
The film also finds room for a broader conversation about ambition. Mann said she has recently allowed herself to do less, something she described as a departure from years of working as hard as possible. Buteau observed that a younger generation is, in her view, ambitious in a different direction entirely: ‘ambitious to retire early, to have a soft life.’ Fisher, jet-lagged and characteristically candid throughout the interview, briefly misheard the word ‘peace’ as something anatomically unrelated, a moment that brought proceedings to a brief and joyful halt.
Spa Weekend centres its real love story not on the yoga instructor or a rekindled romance, but on the friendship itself: its inconvenience, its longevity and its capacity to crack open the emotional baggage that four very different women have been quietly carrying. Whether the goat scene lands as planned, Fisher suggested, may determine everyone’s retirement timeline. The film opens on 21 August 2026.