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Without A Paddle
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Paramount Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (3rd August 2009). |
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The Film
 Even though I approached the “Without a Paddle” (2004) duo of films in reverse order, starting with the second film, I’m not sure there’s a right way of watching them at all. The star power and the comedic potential of Seth Green and Dax Shepard are more enticing, but the films follow the same basic plot, only the first one seems to take itself a bit more seriously. At times it works a bit better in this first one, but at other times the jokes fall just as flat as it’s successor (though thankfully with far less cg squirrels). It’s a prime study of what happens when people funny and good in other places and other movies are combined into one movie, since it does work in some places when you assemble a super crew of actors or comedians. However for “Without A Paddle” you never get above a mediocre buddy comedy that misfires with most of it’s gags and drives at some underlying sentimentality. After the death of their friend Billy (Antony Starr), the three remaining friends return home for his funeral and reunite over some memories of their childhood dreams. Once they discover an old treasure chest hidden in their tree house, Jerry (Matthew Lillard), Dan (Seth Green) and Tom (Dax Shepard) decide to follow their childhood goal of discovering the treasure of D.B. Cooper in the Oregon forests by using directions left by Billy just before his death. At first their adventure is fairly by the book, until a bear takes Dan away, eats their satellite phone and portion of the map they need to get past the rapids. Escaping the bear by going down river, the trio soon finds themselves falling over waterfalls and getting chased down by a couple of hillbilly marijuana farmers. Honestly these actors are funnier than the film gives them the ability to be. If they had allowed this to be an "R" rated buddy comedy through the forest, more towards the “Harold and Kumar” (2004, 2008 & 2010), series it would have been able to execute on a much higher level. I don’t think that every comedy needs to have nudity, cursing, or gore, but it sometimes helps. When you have Dax Shepard, who was funny in the "R" rated “Let’s Go to Prison” (2006), and Seth Green, who has managed to produce comedy on very non "R" rated levels, I would expect a bit more comedy, but instead I get a couple smiles but no real laughs at the jokes. It’s far and ahead of it’s sequel “Without a Paddle: Nature’s Calling” (2009), but still not a truly funny comedy. The rest of the cast is not a bad assortment of actors either and they all give fine performances for what their characters are, but I keep going back to the directing and writing as the main problems with the film. The screenplay by Jay Leggett and Mitch Rousse just doesn’t deliver many jokes and is so drawn into the message it’s trying to tell at the end it looses sight of the comedy that it’s supposed to be delivering on. In retrospect I gave director Steven Brill too much credit for “Drillbit Taylor” (2008) and he does even less to impress here, the directing seems to cut away from the comedy moments far too much, taking a beat out or letting a joke play on for a few beats too long. But in the end there’s not much to say about this film because there honestly isn’t that much good or bad about it. It feels like the type of movie that will get endless replay on Comedy Central during the daytime and weekend hours when they’ve run out of repeats of other movies and shows to fill time with. It’s a mundane buddy comedy that isn’t very funny despite the potential of some of it’s cast and seems to fail even more in spite of it. Saying it’s better than the sequel is not being generous, but just a display of how truly miserable the direct to video sequel really is. The funny part is, they reused the menus (or at least the graphic design of the floating log and fonts) from the sequel’s Blu-ray release that came out earlier. It’s not really that funny, but I needed something to laugh about after just smiling every 30 minutes for an hour and a half.
Video
Presented in 2.35:1 1080p 24/fps high-definition with AVC MPEG-4 encoding, the film doesn’t look bad at all but lacks many of the features I would expect from a Blu-ray release of a more recent film. There is a murky layer of grain that drifts around the outskirts of the main focus of the film, most apparent in some of the car scenes where the focus is on the faces of the characters, yet the rest of their bodies are oddly and annoyingly out of focus, making for a combination of poor camerawork and editing to take down the otherwise good video quality of the film.
Audio
Presented in either English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mixed at 48kHz/24-bit as well as French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 surround. The film's TrueHD audio doesn’t blow me away with the sound, but it’s a better representation of what Blu-ray should sound like. The levels and balance of the sound are still good and it moves fairly well in a good sound system, it has an odd volume problem where some scenes sound slightly muted compared to others. The soundtrack chosen for the film isn’t the greatest, there are some real cornball songs mixed in along with the soundtrack, but still a fine transfer. There are English, English for the hearing impaired, French, Portuguese and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
The single disc release comes with two commentaries, a featurette, thirteen deleted scenes, intersitials and a theatrical trailer. First is the audio commentary with director Steven Brill, which isn’t the most entertaining comedy but it’s moderately informative. He talks about the different actors in the film, filming in New Zealand, and little facts about the filming of the movie, but he isn’t terribly engaging or excited about the film and doesn’t have someone else to help liven him up. Brill constantly says he’s looking for a “Stand By Me” (1986) for adults vibe with the film, but he’s definitely shooting too high and thinks far too highly of himself. The picture-in-picture video commentary with director Steven Brill and cast members Seth Green, Matthew Lillard, Dax Shepard, Ethan Suplee and Abraham Benrubi is far more entertaining. The video aspect of the commentary gets frustrating after a little while as any pauses or edit points in the commentary that the disc producers took just cut the video and fade the sound of the film back in, only to have that sound fade back out and have the video reappear seconds later. However the actual commentary with the actors is funny and shows that they can produce better improvised material than the movie delivered in script form. I thought it was interesting how the actors also talked about how the movie is less funny because of how some jokes are taken apart in places and ruin the comedy. “MTV’s Making the Movie: ‘Without a Paddle’” runs for 18 minutes and 11 seconds. This featurette is obviously produced as an MTV short feature that takes the airwaves instead of music videos (and I don’t think airs anymore) tries to hype up the movie for the MTV audience. The production of the featurette itself becomes more of a burden to the featurette than if they had just put it together independently. However they still bring in behind-the-scenes footage and some interesting sides of production to the table, so they manage to bring the annoyingness of MTV and the information of a making-of featurette into one big, moderately annoying, featurette. Next are the deleted scenes, which also have optional director’s audio commentary with Steven Brill. 13 in all they run for 24 minutes and 8 seconds: - “Graduation” runs for 53 seconds, clips designed to be from high school, Brill talks about how he thought this scene was funny. - “Jerry’s Office” runs for 2 minutes and 4 seconds, Jerry gives a presentation at work, Brill talks about how it characterized Jerry. - “Jerry/Denise’s House” runs for 4 minutes and 44 seconds, Jerry argues with his girlfriend, Brill talks about how funny the scene is, though unneccesary. - “Parking” runs for 1 minute and 43 seconds, this is an extended version of the parking lot scene with Dan and the man who takes his spot, Brill talks about why he edited the scene down. - “Dr. Mott’s Office” runs for 1 minute and 1 second, another extended scene, but of Dan at work, Brill talks about how he likes the scene but it didn’t work. - “Long Flight/Tom Leaves” runs for 1 minute and 10 seconds, Tom gets beaten up more by the two women at the beginning of the movie, Brill again talks about how the scene didn’t work. - “Billy’s Funeral” runs for 3 minutes and 11 seconds, the trio talk at the funeral, Brill talks about how the seriously the scene was shot. - “Bar Scene” runs for 2 minutes and 11 seconds, the trio hang out in a bar after the funeral and get drunk, Brill talks about putting himself into the scene. - “Boys Meet Sheriff” runs for 1 minute and 34 seconds, an extended version of the trio’s talk with the sheriff in town, Brill talks about cutting it out to not tip people off about the sheriff being a main character. - “Nose Hair” runs for 1 minute and 27 seconds, the trio arrive at grandpa’s nose, Brill talks about how it was hilarious when he wrote it but turned out flat. Sort of like the movie. - “Fish Heads” runs for 1 minute and 17 seconds, the trio continue to spy on the hillbillies at their camp, Brill talks about running jokes related to the scene that were dropped. - “Fish Heads/Shadow” runs for 54 seconds, more of the hillbillies’ conspiracy theory running gag, no Brill commentary here. - “Boy Scouts” runs for 1 minute and 59 seconds, extended version of the ending, Brill says its funny. Next are the MTV intersitials a series of ads to be aired on MTV which are riffs on the film, 6 in all, playable together for 2 minutes and 43 seconds, or separately described below: - “Camping Inferno” runs for 32 seconds, Dan’s sleeping bag lights on fire. - “Thoughts Vegas” runs for 17 seconds, Tom asks how far it is to Vegas. - “Slurpee Brain Freeze” runs for 32 seconds, Tom pours his slurpee out the window. - “Bear Attack” runs for 17 seconds, the trio talk about avoiding bear attacks - “Sleeping Bag 2 Girls” runs for 32 seconds , Tom kisses 2 girls in the sleeping bag section. - “Flashlight” runs for 32 seconds, Tom burns out his eyes with a flashlight. Finally the theatrical trailer runs for 2 minutes and 32 seconds.
Overall
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