'Fool's Gold' Narrowly Loses To 'Disaster Movie' For Most Self-Explanatory Movie of the Year
Recently I have been studying a lot about ancient Chinese history, particularly their astonishing oceanic achievements in the early 1400s, when their great ocean fleets sailed around the world's oceans and charted the entire planet decades and centuries before the great European explorers. In doing that they have left 600-year-old shipwrecks all over the world, many of which have yet to be discovered. The subject is endlessly fascinating to me, so I was hoping a story about a Spanish galleon sunk in 1715 would be more entertaining, but unfortunately this little adventure is badly dumbed down by trying to cater to the lowest common denominator.Matthew McConaughey (who probably has the most difficult name to spell in all of Hollywood) has certainly done worse films, but unfortunately the only one that pops into my mind at the moment is Texas Chainsaw III, which has to be one of the worst and most tasteless films ever made, even for a chainsaw film. I have never been a big fan of Kate Hudson, ever since I was disappointed by the hugely overrated Almost Famous, but interestingly enough, she and McConaughey have chemistry enough here, it's just too bad that it's so obvious that the director has them running around half naked for the majority of the movie. Have to keep the audience interested somehow, and since the story isn't going to do it…
McConaughey and Hudson play Tess and Finn, a married couple whose marriage is long since broken or about to be broken or something like that. It doesn't matter, they are still madly in love with each other, they just need a sunken treasure adventure and a captive audience to bring them back together again. Finn is sure that he has found the location of the wreck of the ancient treasure ship, but has to convince Tess and the super-rich Nigel (a bored Donald Sutherland) that he's right, which is no easy task, given his history as more than a bit of a loser.As a group of rival treasure hunters closes in on the treasure ship at the same time, you have your routine, by-the-numbers movie treasure hunt, and your eyes can safely glaze over for much of the rest of the movie.
[caption id="attachment_20671" align="alignright" width="200" caption="I'm really starting to get confused about who this movie was made for..."]
[/caption]Incidentally, Nigel has a daughter, Gemma. This is obviously the most outrageously pointless and idiotic role in the entire movie. Her job seems to be to pop up every once in a while wearing a tiny bikini and making another idiot remark. This girl doesn't have a thought in her head and looks like she's 13 years old. She is a pedophile's dream, and I can not for the life of me imagine why she would be put in this movie. What a waste.
The last portion of the movie is composed of a bizarre climax, a series of descents into a real rock formation in southern California that shoots water up into the air like a cannon. When I used to go there in high school we called it the "toilet bowl," but no one I know was ever brave or dumb enough to jump into it.
For the purpose of the movie, there is a shipwreck that has somehow managed to wriggle its way underneath the rocks, and now sits at the base of the toilet bowl, needing only a little jiggle from our heroine (after having been tossed in by the bad guys) to unleash a shower of gold every time a wave comes through.
[caption id="attachment_20668" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Matthew McConaughey keeps his shirt on for almost an entire scene in this movie, by the way."]
[/caption]Right.
This is the kind of nonsense that we get in the conclusion of an already disappointing movie, and believe it or not, it gets even dumber. Lately there seems to have been a nonstop onslaught of treasure hunt movies, no doubt started or at least boosted by National Treasure, which was also disappointing but at least entertaining, as was The Da Vinci Code.
Fool's Gold, on the other hand, is just a little too self-descriptive.
The Bean-Meter
[caption id="attachment_20669" align="aligncenter" width="110" caption="1.5 beans out of 5."]
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