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Without a Paddle Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: PG-13 (for drug content, sexual material, language, crude humor and some violence) Theater release: August 20, 2004 by 20th Century Fox Directed by: Steven Brill Runtime: 1 hour 35 minutes Cast: Seth Green (Dan Mott), Matthew Lillard (Jerry Conlaine), Dax Shepard (Tom Marshall), Burt Reynolds (Del Knox), Ethan Suplee (Elwood), Abraham Benrubi (Dennis), Rachel Blanchard (Flower), Christina Moore (Butterfly), Bart the Bear Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

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Though the title of summer comedy Without a Paddle implies a camping-related snafu, it's got a lot more to worry about than getting lost in the woods. By failing to satisfy any of its target audiences, it's liable to get lost in multiplexes during the August summer movie doldrums.

Beginning with some charming home movie footage, the movie quickly establishes the bond between four childhood friends from Philadelphia: Dan, Jerry, Tom, and Billy—how all American! After high school, they go their separate ways, with great expectations for high achiever Billy. Cut to ten years later. Dan (Seth Green, Austin Powers) is a hypochondriac doctor still looking for love. Jerry (Matthew Lillard, Scooby Doo) has some kind of marketing position and a girlfriend, but he'd rather be surfing and he forgets their anniversary. Tom (Dax Shepard, MTV's "Punk'd") hasn't found his occupational niche, too busy fooling around with women and schemes.

Then the sad news hits: Billy has died in an accident. The remaining three friends get together for the funeral and reminisce over their youth in the old tree house, where they discover that Billy was planning to get the gang together for a treasure hunt. Seems that he had pinpointed the location of D.B. Cooper in the Cascade Mountains of Lane County, Oregon. (According to historical legend, Cooper was a famed thief and airline hijacker who parachuted out of a plane over the Pacific Northwest with $200,000 in 1971, never to be heard from again.)

The three friends, now entering their thirties, recognize this is their last chance to live out their childhood adventures and finish Billy's quest. So it's off to Oregon and a canoe trip through the Columbia River valley. Three city slickers searching for treasure in the woods amid grizzly bears and crooked hillbillies? Either this is a remake of Deliverance or it sounds like we're in for some comedic mishaps. It's essentially City Slickers meets The Goonies, set in the woods.

You wish it were either of those!

I find that filmmakers' resumes are often indicative of what to expect from a movie (www.imdb.com is especially useful for this). Director Steven Brill is best known for two Adam Sandler comedies: the hit Mr. Deeds and Little Nicky, one of Sandler's few flops. Among the writers are Fred Wolf (David Spade comedies Joe Dirt and Dickie Roberts) and Harris Goldberg (Rob Schneider's Deuce Bigalow, Dana Carvey's The Master of Disguise). You know you're in trouble when Mr. Deeds is the strongest track record of the bunch.

The actors fare a little better, more out of charm than laughs. Green is an up-and-coming comedic talent, and he comes off like a new generation's Michael J. Fox here, playing the lovable wimp who learns to face his fears. Lillard began his career doubtfully, but he's grown into a likeable screen presence; after his goofy, spot-on portrayal of Shaggy in Scooby-Doo, he does a good job playing the "leader" of the trio. The verdict's still out on Shepard's comedic talents. He has no other silver screen experience on his resume, and here he plays shallow and dumb with generic, slacker one-liners. Still, all three are fleshed out with some personality, and maybe that's why they're still likeable in spite of the content.

There are some chuckle-worthy moments in this movie. It's fun to watch them fish at night, and the resulting encounter with a grizzly bear is cute. Several jokes are made at the expense of Green's short stature with the others. And admittedly, the scene shown in commercials involving the three of them in their underwear without shelter, forced to snuggle together for warmth, is pretty funny.

Beyond all that and a few random laughs, Without a Paddle is amateur and tedious. Some of the lines are flat-out terrible. "I'm not an astronaut, I'm an American," Shepard declares after a canoe accident—it's no funnier in context. Everything bad that can happen to Green's character does with predictable results. Burt Reynolds (Deliverance, natch) is absolutely terrible in a cameo role, though it's probably because he has nothing to work with. The drug-dealing hillbillies that chase our heroes throughout the movie with automatic weapons are never funny, trying for the same cheap laughs as the bumbling robbers in Home Alone. The writers rip off the cell phone gag from Jurassic Park 3, and pay homage to the overused bullet-time effect from The Matrix. This isn't funny, it's lazy, and when the good guys start pelting the bad guys with bags of poop-I kid you not-you know that we're dealing with fourth-grade writing here.

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