Without a Paddle

(Steven Brill, USA, 2004)

Three mates: Jerry (Matthew Lillard) cannot clinch a mature, intimate relationship with his girlfriend, Dan (Seth Green) is full of neurotic fears, and Tom (Dax Shepard) is an irresponsible layabout. After the death of their mutual best friend, they all decide to take a Deliverance-style ride up a river (shot but not specifically located in New Zealand) in order to search for a lost treasure.

Naturally, all three guys are going to stumble upon some precious life lessons before their quest is through. But nobody watches trashy comedies like this one for moral edification.

More central to Without a Paddle's entertainment value is the sight of Burt Reynolds as a fierce mountain-man with a thirty-year, overgrown beard, or the foul antics of two murderous rednecks (played by Ethan Suplee and Abraham Benrubi) in pursuit of our heroes for inadvertently burning down their marijuana field. The film does not reach the energetic heights of the Farrelly brothers or borrow the charm of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004), but it does manage to be intermittently quite funny.

And did I mention the two hippie chicks (Rachel Blanchard and Christina Moore) up a tree who never shave their legs and have perfected the art of lifting coffee cups with their feet? It is at this point that the real theme of Without a Paddle crystallises.

Director Steven Brill (a veteran of several Adam Sandler classics) and his writers are obsessively devoted to delineating the crucial difference between the heterosexual male need to glimpse a girl's "downstairs" and the inevitably homoerotic implications that arise from the situation of guys having to huddle together in the cold, dark woods.

Like many trash comedies, Without a Paddle is either – depending on your viewpoint – a vulgarly offensive reinforcement of the status quo or one long, hilarious, crypto-gay gag.

However, it is a definite possibility that no one involved in making it ever managed to grasp the distinction between these two options.

MORE Brill: Little Nicky

© Adrian Martin November 2004