Without a Paddle Review
by Robin Clifford (robin AT reelingreviews DOT com)August 23rd, 2004
"Without a Paddle"
When three best friends learn of the death of their fourth, Billy (Anthony Starr), they attend the funeral and congregate at the one place they all loved as kids – Billy's tree house. While going through their boyhood treasures they come across a map that appears to show the location of the landing site of the infamous D.B. Cooper. They band together to find his stolen treasure and journey into the wilds of the Pacific Northwest only to find themselves up the creek "Without a Paddle."
Someone must have thought that a wilderness road trip movie with Seth Green and Matthew Lillard would be ripe for a slapstick misadventure. Just take the aforementioned actors, mix in a bunch of wacky supporting characters, add a string of goofy circumstances and, voila, you get a fun summer holiday comedy that everyone will enjoy. I didn't.
Things start off showing the four best friends (as adults played by Green, Lillard, Dax Shepard and Anthony Starr as the late Billy) as they grow up together, graduate school and go their separate ways. Billy is the go-for-the-gusto adventurer who has traveled the world, dying in a parasailing accident in Peru. His friends assemble to salute and say goodbye to their friend, find the map and head off on an adventure. Along the way they meet a hostile town sheriff, two pot-growing mountain men, a rather large bear, a pair of free-spirited beauties out to save the forest and a reclusive mystery man.
Okay, there seems to be enough material here to come up with something funny, say a parody on "Deliverance," maybe? Nope. What starts out promisingly enough, especially when Bart the Bear makes his appearance and carries off fetal-folded Dan (Green) away as his cub. I even laughed out loud a couple of times. Then, things go down hill fast with the painfully manufactured screenplay by Jay Leggett and Mitch Rouse (from a story by Fred Wolf, Harris Goldberg and Tom Nursall). The movie-by-committee story introduces the wild mountain men, Elwood and Dennis (Ethan Suplee and Abraham Benrubi), as they menacingly frighten the boys while fishing with dynamite. The "Deliverance" possibilities jumped to my mind. Then, the hefty fishermen turn out to be marijuana-growing bad guys with an arsenal of weapons that would make a small army proud. Potential parody becomes a meaningless chase with the bad guys getting their expected comeuppance in the end. Other sequences, especially one with hippie chicks Flower and Butterfly (Rachel Blanchard and Christina Moore), fall flat in their stupidity.
There is one bright note to "Without a Paddle," though. Newcomer Dax Shepard, from MTV's "Punk'd," has a knack for droll, well-delivered comedy. The young actor shows a great deal of potential and is the only good thing about this inane waste of time. Even Burt Reynolds, nearly unrecognizable, is left to hang out to dry. Helmer Steven Brill and company owe me two hours. I give it a D+.
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