WITHOUT A PADDLE
[] (Two stars)
Running time: 95 minutes. Rated PG-13 (drug content, sexual material, language). At the Loews 42nd Street, the Union Square, others.
A likable trio of actors struggles valiantly but ultimately fails to keep this dopey buddy comedy afloat.
This buddy genre film from Adam Sandler cohort Steve Brill (“Mr. Deeds,” “Little Nicky”) takes a walk on the mild side, featuring some rather tame gross-out moments, a pile of furtive gay references and dollops of incongruous warm-and-fuzzy sentiment.
In a kind of “City Slickers”-meets-“Deliverance” plot line attributed to five screenwriters, a number of silly laughs surface as the three hapless wilderness adventurers tangle with a maternal bear, trigger-happy hillbilly pot-growers and hairy-legged tree-huggers.
But a rudderless comedy like this needs an antic edge, and although there’s a sense that “Punk’d” regular Dax Shepard may slip his leash at any moment, it never happens – and the entire enterprise succumbs to lethargy.
Even Burt Reynolds’ cameo as a supposedly eccentric mountain man is played surprisingly straight.
Tom (Shepard), Jerry (Matthew Lillard of “Scooby Doo”) and Dan (Seth Green) are childhood buddies who reunite in their 30s following the death of a close friend.
Jerry has grown up to be a buttoned-up businessman with commitment problems, Dan’s a hypochondriac doctor and motorcycle-riding Tom refuses to grow up at all.
After their pal’s funeral, the three make a trip to their old treehouse, where they discover their late friend has left them a map leading to the treasure of a famous bank robber. So, of course, off they go into the wilds of Oregon, where they predictably enough encounter all manner of disasters.
Less slapstick than its trailers would suggest, “Without a Paddle” benefits from the camaraderie of its three lead actors but never rises above the level of harmless video fare.