The Good: Seth Green is funny, One decent line
The Bad: Predictable plot, character arcs and humor.
The Basics: With a few decent lines, but hampered by a great sense of predictability and silly physical comedy, Without A Paddle flops for me.
My wife has taken to jerking me around by playing with me about movies (a very serious subject for me, not so much for her!). When we merged our DVD collection, there was a pretty stark difference between what she brought to the relationship and what I had there. My shelf was filled with dramas and television series'. Her collection was filled with comedies, many of which I am predisposed against whatwith their young casts and emphasis on slapstick. With few exceptions, they involve drug use, dick and fart jokes that are either not funny, have been done before or are just gross, or utilize humor that pokes fun at different ethnicities, sexualities or body types in ways that hinge on shock value or offense and thereby hold up poorly upon multiple viewings.
My wife has taken a perverse delight in sitting me down in front of movies from her shelf and having me watch them, while she watches me squirm. The thing is, for some of them, she will engage me in conversation afterward to ask me how I intend to review said film only to reveal that she is not a fan of the movie and has been waiting for me to view and review the video to get rid of the DVD. Gotta love her sense of humor. One of the shelfwarmers she recently subjected me to was Without A Paddle, a movie she had picked up on a friend's advice without viewing beforehand only to discover she was not a fan of it. That said, our mutual love of Seth Green makes the movie bearable and it has a few good lines, but largely it is predictable in both character and plot elements and lacking in enduring humor.
Billy, Tom, Jerry and Dan are the best of friends growing up and they go through many adventures as children, graduate high school together and go their separate ways after college. Ten years after graduation, Dan is a doctor, Jerry is experiencing growing pains in his relationship with Angie, Tom is a screw-up who is too busy bullshitting his way through life to get anywhere and Billy abruptly dies. Billy's funeral brings the other three back together from their disparate locations and while reminiscing in their old treehouse, they discover their old lock box with a treasure map to D.B. Cooper's fortune and are surprised to find it was recently updated by Billy.
After a brief discussion, the three men pack up and head out into the Oregon wilderness in the attempt to find D.B. Cooper's loot as a memorial to Billy. As Dan faces his fears about everything in the world, Jerry pines for Angie and Tom goads the other two into continuing down the river. But an encounter with a bear, a pair of rednecks growing pot and two hippie chicks living in a massive redwood pull the friends apart and force them to ask themselves and one another what is truly important to them.
Sadly, Without A Paddle's lessons are obvious from the initial characterizations. Dan needs to learn to stop letting fear rule him, Jerry needs to commit to his girlfriend and Tom needs to stop lying to everyone about everything and stop gambling (if he can even be trusted with that explanation for his misery). So, the movie sets out to teach the characters what the viewers already know. Unfortunately, the methods are hardly the most impressive, obvious or reasonable. For example, Dan learns to overcome his fears, in part, by an encounter with a bear where he is nearly killed. This is a strange place to learn to not fear the outdoors in that the fear of being mauled by a bear is quite real to poor Dr. Mott.
Similarly, nothing earthshattering occurs to Jerry during the adventure to suddenly wake him up to the realization that the woman he loves is the woman he loves. In fact, throughout the movie, he looks eagerly at the only other women to pop up and outside Dan yelling at him to commit, there is nothing he shouldn't already know - given that he was part of this quartet of incredibly close and loyal friends - from the outset to change his mind.
As far as the humor goes, Without A Paddle is a real miss in many ways. In fact, the most funny joke in the piece is delivered by a character who is only on the screen for less than two minutes ("Thanks for breaking glass where my kids play"). The rest of the humor is mostly in the form of the bear mauling Dan, the hicks chasing the trio and . . . well, even in that there is not much humor at all. Instead, the movie plods along as Dan, Tom and Jerry outrun two angry guys with big guns who seem determined to shoot or gut them. The humor of the rednecks wears thin quickly and the fact that the viewer can pretty much tell where the movie is headed makes it go at a pace that is interminably slow.
This brings us to the acting. Burt Reynolds is wasted in his cameo and Ethan Suplee and Abraham Benrubi - who play the rednecks Elwood and Dennis - quickly wear thin without any sense of their comic timing being utilized in their performances. Benrubi especially is underused and given little chance to show off his acting chops as he is forced to dumbly chase the three leads.
For the leads, the movie definitely is appealing to the current twentysomething crowd, but it only insults their intelligence. Matthew Lillard, who was impressively cast in the dismal Scooby-Doo (reviewed here!) illustrates no particular talent as Jerry and, in fact, did not deliver a single line that garnered a laugh. As well, Dax Shepard, who I recognized from the show Parenthood (season one is reviewed here!) - which seems to appeal to the same niche - is trading more on celebrity than talent. In fact, I've no idea how he became a celebrity, but in Without A Paddle, his deliveries are obvious, flat and devoid of any spark that would give them a sense of enduring humor.
Seth Green is given just enough to work with to salvage his place in the movie. As Dan, Green asks the questions that the viewers are most likely to ask, like "why are we doing this?!" Green is able to balance his abilities as a serious actor with his comic timing to give a performance that is one of the better straightman performances in recent years. Still, it is not his funniest work and it certainly lacks the emotional gravitas of some of his better characters, like Oz.
On DVD, Without A Paddle has a commentary track that is more funny in parts than the actual movie as the cast comments on the stuntwork they did. There is an MTV featurette on the making of the movie, as well as deleted scenes (which do not make the movie any funnier or more enduring) and the movie trailer. These are not bad, especially for this type of movie, but they do not negate the overall underwhelming source material.
Without A Paddle is not as funny as the previews might make it seem and it is easy to pass on for the viewing or the buy.
For other works with Seth Green, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Family Guy Presents: It’s A Trap!
Old Dogs
Robot Chicken - Season 1
Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade Of Cartoon Comedy
Sex Drive
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
3.5/10
For other movies, please visit my index page by clicking here!
© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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