An atrocious excuse for a Romancing the Stone-type romance-adventure, Andy Tennant’s aptly titled Fool’s Gold won’t be fooling anyone who has seen a decent adventure pic.
Treasure hunter Benjamin “Finn” Finnegan (Matthew McConaughey) finds a shard of something-or-other that represents a clue to the location of a long-lost Spanish Galleon and untold fortune.
Unfortunately, his ship catches fire and sinks beside him, bringing him further in debt with local stereotype Bigg Bunny (one guess what his profession is).
Finn’s estranged wife Tess, meanwhile, is working as a stewardess on a yacht owned by billionaire Nigel Honeycutt (Donald Sutherland); as Nigel’s spoiled daughter arrives for a visit, Finn sees a convenient opportunity to finance his latest expedition and rekindle things with Tess.
We’ve seen all these sunken-treasure movies have to offer, starting perhaps, with Peter Yates’ The Deep in 1977, and recent efforts like John Stockwell’s Into the Blue have had little new to offer; yet Tennant’s film is a virtual retread of the Paul Walker/Jessica Alba vehicle, and it even fails on those thin terms.
McConaughey and Hudson have no chemistry (it doesn’t help when our romantic leads get a divorce ten minutes into the movie) and the goofy tone the film takes completely fails to draw us into the story. Which isn’t anything we haven’t already seen anyways.
Just in case you weren’t offended by the laziness of the screenwriters, we’re given abominable stereotypes of homosexual chefs, black gangsta rappers, braindead beauty queens, and a ridiculous Ukrainian immigrant played Ewen Bremner, who embarrasses himself while trying to obscure a Scottish accent.
The pits; about as bad as a $70 million budget can buy.
A curious excess of scenes featuring McConaughey getting beat up may please some viewers.
