There were a couple things about Without a Paddle that made it clear
why the name was so fitting. While viewing the movie, I felt bored by
the unintelligent jokes, dumb, unheard of situations, crude dialogue,
and terrible plot, and I was stranded in the theater without a paddle
or some sort of device to get me out of the movie. I also regretted
not having a paddle that I could possibly hit all of the ignorant
teenagers in the movie laughing at each of the ridiculous jokes that
were tremendously unbearable. But the biggest of all was that it was
almost as if the creators, after finishing filming, realized just how
bad a picture it actually was with no way to help make it any better
that they named it accordingly.
Without a Paddle stars Matthew Lillard, Seth Green, and Dax
Shepard. These three play buddies who, after the death of the fourth
group member and the finding of a map they suspect could lead them to
the famed thief D.B. Cooper's treasure decide to go out on an
adventure to find it. They head out to the country and begin a canoe
trip that takes them to the worst times of their lives. After running
into a bear, the three stumble upon two large, aggressive men who are
marijuana farmers. After thinking they are attempting to steal some
of their crop, the men begin to chase down Lillard, Shepard, and
Green. Meanwhile, they somehow trigger flares to go off, which light
the cannabis plants on fire and burn the entire field. The two men
are furious, so they set out to hunt the trio and kill them. While
running from their hunters, the three run into two women who live in a
tree and are "all natural", and then come face to face with a mountain
man played by Burt Reynolds, who claims to be D.B. Cooper's best
friend. After finding the body of Cooper, the friends come to
realization that the treasure was not money, since Cooper burned all
of his to live longer, but life itself. It was a forced scene that
looked unnatural, and seemed just to be a part where the director said
"Hey, let's put something somewhat intellectual into this pile of
junk." By the time they arrived at the scene, most stopped caring.
Paddle was an attempt to be a comedic take on Deliverance, which
was based on the book by James Dickey. However, Deliverance was both
a book and movie that was not meant to be made into a comedy. Whether
it was by mistake of the writers, the director, or the actors, the end
result was atrocious. Paddle had line after line of senseless, stupid
jokes that were just plain stupid. The characters were all quite
annoying and obnoxious, especially Shepard's character. Every
sentence of his came out to be more detestable than his last, and in
the end you kind of want the hunters to catch up and slaughter the lot
of them. But besides constant reminders of Deliverance, Paddle feels
also like a version of The Goonies if it had grown-ups and took place
in the wilderness. None of the humor seems very clever at all, since
almost all of it is a bunch of potty gags. Ah, but we have some
variation! We are even given jokes about Bullet Time while they run
through the marijuana field, and they even borrow the idea of the dogs
getting high from Half Baked as the smoke from the burning marijuana
plants get to the dogs.
All in all, Without a Paddle was just a bad idea. The title
suggests being "Up sh*ts creek without a paddle", and the movie itself
stays true to it. Save yourself some money by avoiding this if
possible. Like the characters in the movie, the makers should have
just stayed home. Then at least no one would be in constant need of a
paddle for one reason or another.
Dave's Grade– D-
========== X-RAMR-ID: 38501 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1312582 X-RT-TitleID: 1134891 X-RT-AuthorID: 10729 X-RT-RatingText: D-
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