Movies of the Week
February 8 - 14
See it or skip it? Fool’s Gold and In Bruges By David Balzer
Fool’s Gold
Fool’s Gold wants to be a big, gaudy, ’80s-style action-adventure-comedy, à la Romancing the Stone and Outrageous Fortune, and there’s nothing wrong with that—such escapism is what Hollywood should be delivering at this dreary time of year. The film has, to its great advantage, two leads who perfectly suit that purpose: Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson, the box office–friendly team of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, who both possess a jovial sexiness and know how to deliver ludicrous lines with ironic confidence. Add to the mix a smirking Donald Sutherland as billionaire Nigel Honeycutt, the man whose sprawling yacht becomes home base for the film’s Bahamas treasure hunt, and you have a surefire winner, no?
No, not really. Fool’s Gold has its moments, including a cool sequence near the end involving a blowhole, but it’s not nearly exhilarating enough. McConaughey’s Finn—a super-tanned, jive-talking ne’er-do-well, as if you didn’t know that already—is designed as director and co-writer Andy Tennant’s immortal cad: try to kill him and he keeps coming back. But Finn’s imperilments have little zest to them, and Hudson’s Tess, who has just divorced Finn even though “the sex was great,” seems incapable of the dry rejoinders one demands of such a character. The film is crudely drawn in all the wrong places. We don’t get the tortuous, comic book plotting of, say, the Indiana Jones franchise, but we do get the ethnic stereotypes, including the main foils of our Aryan heroes, a team of bumbling black gangsters headed by one Bigg Bunny (Kevin Hart). Make no mistake: fluff is its own, special art form, and Fool’s Gold, for the most part, falls flat. WAIT FOR THE DVD
Fool’s Gold is now playing at SilverCity Yonge & Eglinton (2300 Yonge St.), Beach Cinemas (1651 Queen St. E.), Scotiabank Theatre Toronto (259 Richmond St. W.) and others.
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