Without a Paddle Review
If you were looking to feel superior toward a movie in 2004, you had few better choices than Without a Paddle. The trailers were geared toward juvenile humor that ranged in depth from homophobia and animatronic bears to the ever-present fear of being raped by hillbillies. It's not that Without a Paddle doesn't touch on these things, it's that it's not very mean-spirited about them, and is more likeable than it should be for much of its running time. This can be credited to the snappy dialogue by Jay_Leggett and Mitch_Rouse, who get down a good "guys razzing each other" tone that develops the characters and makes them seem comfortable enough to be real friends. Since the actors are clearly having a good time, it's easier to swallow the ridiculous things that happen to them in the course of a camping trip gone wrong in all the predictable ways. As though to prove Seth_Green is the most marketable of the stars, all the truly outrageous things happen to his character, leaving Matthew_Lillard and Dax_Shepard to look on and guffaw moronically. This gets tiresome, as do a bunch of set pieces that beat a sadly familiar trail. But darn it if a good soundtrack and some watchable chemistry don't push things toward a halfway-decent lowbrow comedy. In a ten-minute cameo as a mountain hermit, Burt_Reynolds submits a far livelier performance than his co-starring role in The Dukes of Hazzard the following year. Also nice fun are Abraham_Benrubi and Ethan_Suplee as a pair of redneck marijuana farmers, with Suplee's performance serving as a template for his moony simpleton on My_Name_Is_Earl. Derek Armstrong, Rovi
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