A God-awful cinematic experience that could just as easily be re-titled Homophobia in a Canoe, Without a Paddle is an ugly, badly conceived Frankenstein's monster of a film that hacks large chunks out of such beloved classics as Stand By Me, The Goonies, and (of all things!) Deliverance and misguidedly sews them together. John Boorman’s iconic white-water nightmare, depicting a group of cocksure Atlanta businessmen emasculated and nigh swallowed whole by the unforgiving wilderness, is unparalleled in the annals of man versus nature. But – who could have imagined – it's an idea that loses something when played for potty humor and frat-boy giggles.
Incorporating the real-life legend of D.B. Cooper, the infamous highjacker who parachuted out of a plane over the Pacific Northwest with a bag full of money and was never seen again, the film opens with four young boys in a tree-house swearing they will someday track down Cooper’s treasure. Flash-forward twenty odd years and one of their number is sadly dead, leaving underachiever Tom (Dax Shepard), underachiever Jerry (Matthew Lillard), and successful young doctor Matt (Seth Green) to embark on said expedition in honor of their late friend, Billy. Matt it seems is straight-laced and rendered guilty of the unforgivable frat-boy comedy crime of wanting to be really good at his job. Valuing such ridiculous things as his personal safety, Matt’s duty is seemingly to be poked, patronized, and pissed-on as the butt of every lazy gag the film has going.
Having established the overall tone by having Tom crash Billy’s funeral, it's down to business and, after a run in with a caricature backwater sheriff, onto the water. In no time at all they lose their canoe, run screaming from an overly maternal bear, hide from angry pot-farmer hillbillies, and ogle a pair of tree-dwelling hippie chicks (a plot device designed solely to facilitate the flinging of poo). In a final act of indignity against Boorman’s classic, Brill crowbars in a cameo from Burt Reynolds as a Grizzly Adams cabin dweller for a sequence that serves no purpose whatsoever, other than so Brill can point and go “Hey! Look! It’s Burt Reynolds from Deliverence."
It might not be so bad if Brill would only commit to the bad taste gags with any real conviction, but rather they seem to serve as a padding for what we can only assume he thinks are larger lessons about not taking life for granted and the value of friendship. Maybe we're being unfair. Maybe he’s right. Maybe huddling together so as to not catch hypothermia really is gay. You decide.
Whatever his intentions Brill is so far off the mark with this he’s practically in another time zone, and it’s left to Jerry to speak the subtext by declaring out of the blue, “Life! Life is the real treasure.” That being the case, it only further begs the question as to why these guys spend theirs flinging poo, because honestly, it takes a unique type of dickhead ensemble for a viewer to actively root for them to be given the “purty mouth” treatment at the hands of buck-toothed rednecks.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
The disc contains a commentary track from director Stephen Brill who is seemingly under the impression that he made a different film entirely. His commentary is as empty as his movie as he blithers on about incidental anecdotes and technical considerations relating to the New Zealand shoot. There is a video track with the cast who clearly had a much better time making it than we did watching it. Also included is the Without a Paddle episode of MTV’s Making The Movie series, which is your typically empty studio puff-piece, designed to promote the movie. The disc also contains a number of trailers and thirteen mercifully brief deleted scenes.
"Without a Paddle" is on sale May 12, 2009 and is rated PG13. Comedy. Directed by Steven Brill. Written by Jay Leggett & Mitch Rouse (Screenplay), Fred Wolf and Harris Goldberg & Tom Nursall (Story). Starring Burt Reynolds, Dax Shepard, Matthew Lillard, Seth Green.
