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In an inept movie that makes even Catwoman seem sane, Steven Brill turns Without A Paddle into twaddle about the strength of boyhood friendship, the value of being alive and the lure of heterosexual liaisons, even with hairy-legged tree-huggers.
The story proposes that three adult men -- part of a team of four boys who grew up together in Oregon -- set out to find the lost treasure of thief D.B. Cooper as a tribute to the now-dead fourth member of their posse.
The dead man even left behind a treasure map for them to follow. That means an ill-prepared camping and canoe trip into the Oregon wilds (although Without A Paddle was filmed in New Zealand to take advantage of tax rebates).
It is emotional twaddle because there is not a single sincere moment in the whole silly thing. Lead actors Seth Green, Dax Shepard and Matthew Lillard drown in dialogue that sounds like it really was written by chimpanzees randomly pounding away on typewriters in a beer commercial. Oddly, however, the chimps must have seen movies such as Deliverance because they shamelessly steal tidbits of plot.
In the end, director Steven Brill (Adam Sandler's acolyte and director of Mr. Deeds and Little Nicky) botches this so badly it ranks as a monumental achievement in idiocy. Throw in a rape scene and the rating would have been zero.
Instead, what passes for humour is all gas. Brill and the so-called screenwriters indulge in homophobia, the throwing of human execrement, savage depictions of hillbillies and the portrayal of women as vicious shrews or brainless sex machines.
Not content with the degrading human behaviour, Brill shows dogs getting stoned on marijuana and a grizzly bear acting like a forest tourist -- meaning he looks as stupid as the people who run into him in the woods. The bitter irony is that Bart the Bear, the superstar movie bruin who plays this role, is clearly smarter than any of the filmmakers.
Worse still, none of the movie's indulgences is funny. There are only one or two marginal chuckles throughout the excruciating 95 minutes this movie takes to die.
This could be a career-killer for the actors, although I'm not sure if Shepard and Lillard have careers substantial enough to dispatch. Green, however, is a staple of teen comedies and has a decent reputation as a support player from TV's Buffy The Vampire Slayer. What he does here -- especially with the short-guy jokes -- might cost him a year in tarnished reputation, but he could recover.
The coup de grace for Without A Paddle, though, is casting Burt Reynolds in a "surprise" support role as a bearded and obviously insane mountain man with 30 years of pent-up cabin fever. Not even type-casting can save this miserable flick.
(This film is rated PG)