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Fool's Gold (12.)

Directed by Andy Tennant.


Starring Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson, Donald Sutherland, Alexis Dziena, Kevin Hart, Ewen Bremner, Ray Winstone. 113 mins


Sun, sea, romance, a little sprinkling of action, how bad could it be? There’s a simple undemanding idea here which is to resurrect the old Romancing the Stone formula but add a dash of the Pirates of the Caribbean. So you have a just divorced couple Ben (McConaughey) and Tess (Hudson) immediately reunited by the possibility of finding sunken Spanish treasure while he tries to ward off the violent attentions of a gangsta rapper who he is also after the loot.


It’s all in the chemistry and when Matthew met Kate, it was murder. They bicker their way through some, admittedly weak dialogue, and rather than sound like charming romantic leads, they’re like the awful arguing couple you feel obliged to invite to social event but always pray they won’t come.


That the film is a bit mindless and silly is one thing but it is also incredibly boring; Russian art house movie boring. Almost nothing happens and when it does its surprisingly violent. It’s brainless yet in amongst it all there is a five minute sequence where Hudson and McC tag team their way through an interminable bit of exposition regarding the origin of the buried treasure they’re all looking for. I defy anyone to try and follow what it is all about.


These are two leads for whom the boat has long since sailed, yet they both still swan around like their hot stuff. The poster has her looking like she has been touched by Goldfinger and he spends as much time as possible with his shirt off and their honed physical perfection is the only point to the movie. They are menaced by a simplistic Gangsta Rapper caricature called Bigg Bunny who gets so frustrated with his relaxed causal help (primarily Malcolm-Jamal Warner from the Crosby Show, who has really let himself go) he gets a white man in to give the locals a bit of discipline.


The support cast idle away their paydays doing silly accents. Sutherland’s English gent is rather good but until someone helpfully explains that he was Ukrainian I had no idea what accent Bremner was attempting. It sounded like a homage to the blocked up man in the old Tunes advert, “I’d like a first clash return to Dottingham please.”




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