Film Reviews

Without a Paddle

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Abraham Benrubi
• Details: US/99 mins/ (12A).

A lame, alleged comedic re-treading of City Slickers by way of Deliverance, Without a Paddle sees three childhood friends - Dan (Seth Green), Tom (Dax Shepard) and Jerry (Matthew Lillard) - reunited when an old pal of theirs dies. Having been left a treasure map by the deceased, the trio, all confronting various crises in their own lives, decide to head out on a backwater adventure, which causes them to run afoul of pair of psychotic marijuana growers. And aside from a run-in with a ridiculous looking, computer generated grizzly bear; things really don't get an awful lot more complicated than that.
Unfortunately, they don't actually manage to get a whole lot funnier, either. The sort of movie that has caught the gross-out bug about five years too late, the extremely limited Without a Paddle has, more ominously, an ugly streak of homophobia coursing through it. Never missing an opportunity to go for the lowest common denominator, the film delights in its crude sense of humour. Forget the paddle, there's not much evidence of a brain here.

Review by Garreth Murphy