Without a Paddle Review
by Dave Bloom (dmb5175 AT gmail DOT com)August 23rd, 2004
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-
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
