Three buddies (Matthew Lillard, Seth Green, and Dax Shepard) who have gone their separate ways come together for their childhood friend’s funeral. They make good on a boyhood pact to look for D.B. Cooper’s treasure, and the trio goes out into the wilderness searching for the lost loot. Along the way, they encounter a territorial bear, lose their canoe, and run afoul of some murderous redneck pot farmers (Ethan Suplee and Abraham Benrubi).
Without a Paddle is an odd duck. It goes from drama to comedy to action, often in jarring fashion. It doesn’t work, mostly because it feels like it’s checking off a grocery list of genres rather than telling a straightforward story. The early scenes of the friends reuniting feel like Stand by Me 2 and the scenes of the friends getting tangled up with the drug farmers feels like a dumb stoner comedy. The stuff involving two sexy treehuggers particularly comes out of leftfield. The fact that there are no less than five credited screenwriters leads me to suspect the script passed through too many hands who tossed in too many ideas and never settled on a cohesive tone.
It would be a different story if it was funny. Unfortunately, it never stays on one particular tangent long enough to develop much comic momentum. There’s an unfortunate Matrix sight gag, which really helps to date the movie, and lots of references to Deliverance, which makes sense as Burt Reynolds shows up late in the game as a grizzled old mountain man.
The movie remains watchable throughout, if only because of the chemistry between Lillard, Green, and Shepard. They are at the very least amusing, even if the flimsy script and tonal whiplashes often let them down. If it wasn’t for their performances, Without a Paddle would’ve truly been… well… without a paddle.
the genre switches worked pretty damn well for me.
ReplyDelete