...more silly than romantic, more frantic than comedic, and more busy than adventurous.
So there you have it: Finn's after treasure and trying to get his wife back. Tess is trying to get as far away from Finn as possible, obviously not succeeding or we wouldn't have a romance in our romantic comedy. All of it bewilders Honeycutt, but he's such a good sport he goes along with Finn's romantic dreams anyway. Gemma is too much an airhead for anything to bewilder her. A subplot about Honeycutt and his daughter is too superficial and superfluous for us to care about. Fitch is Finn's rival in the story but never an enemy. And even though Bigg Bunny is an enemy, he's too much of a comic villain to be a real threat.
I'm afraid I gave up on the whole thing during the opening credits when Finn and his Ukrainian buddy Alfonz (Ewen Bremner) manage to sink their boat while swimming under it, hardly noticing when it crashes down to the bottom of the ocean next to them. I figured at that point the movie was heading for grief, and I wasn't far wrong. Finn could easily have taken his place among the Three Stooges if he'd been born a half a dozen decades earlier.
"Fool's Gold" is not awful by any means, and it's certainly good-natured enough. It's just so lightweight, with so pedestrian a treasure conflict and so uninvolving a romance that there's not a lot to care about. In fact, the thing I enjoyed most was the background music by Bob Marley and the Wailers, among others. When you like a movie's music more than its story or characters, you know the thing's in trouble.
Video:
The wide, 2.40:1 ratio picture shows its colors well, at least in the main. There are times, especially during outdoor shots, when it gets a bit dark and oversaturated, but otherwise things look good, bright and picturesque. Definition is OK, if on the soft and fuzzy side, and at times one notices some minor haloing in evidence.
Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is marginally better than the video quality, with a wide front-channel stereo spread and an abundance of subtle but effective rear-channel noises like the sounds of waves, rain, wind, bullets, rippling water, and the ambient bloom of the musical track. Most important, the sound is pleasantly warm and natural, making it quite easy to listen to.
Extras:
There isn't much going on in the special-features department. The two major items are brief and inconsequential. "Fool's Gold: Flirting with Adventure" is a behind-the-scenes promo lasting a little over four minutes, and a gag reel is a little under three minutes. That's it. There are twenty-five scene selections; various trailers at start-up only; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; French and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.
Parting Shots:
"Fool's Gold" puts forth a bundle of energy but doesn't pay off with as much entertainment as it would like, maybe because everything we see is so predictable. We know pretty well from the outset how it's all going to turn out, even in each subsequent scene, but I suppose we should expect that of any film in the genre. It's just that this one tries too hard with too little, extending sequences that aren't very good to begin with and then just piling on more. Lord knows, it wants us to like it, and maybe that's enough.
I'm afraid I gave up on the whole thing during the opening credits when Finn and his Ukrainian buddy Alfonz (Ewen Bremner) manage to sink their boat while swimming under it, hardly noticing when it crashes down to the bottom of the ocean next to them. I figured at that point the movie was heading for grief, and I wasn't far wrong. Finn could easily have taken his place among the Three Stooges if he'd been born a half a dozen decades earlier.
"Fool's Gold" is not awful by any means, and it's certainly good-natured enough. It's just so lightweight, with so pedestrian a treasure conflict and so uninvolving a romance that there's not a lot to care about. In fact, the thing I enjoyed most was the background music by Bob Marley and the Wailers, among others. When you like a movie's music more than its story or characters, you know the thing's in trouble.
Video:
The wide, 2.40:1 ratio picture shows its colors well, at least in the main. There are times, especially during outdoor shots, when it gets a bit dark and oversaturated, but otherwise things look good, bright and picturesque. Definition is OK, if on the soft and fuzzy side, and at times one notices some minor haloing in evidence.
Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is marginally better than the video quality, with a wide front-channel stereo spread and an abundance of subtle but effective rear-channel noises like the sounds of waves, rain, wind, bullets, rippling water, and the ambient bloom of the musical track. Most important, the sound is pleasantly warm and natural, making it quite easy to listen to.
Extras:
There isn't much going on in the special-features department. The two major items are brief and inconsequential. "Fool's Gold: Flirting with Adventure" is a behind-the-scenes promo lasting a little over four minutes, and a gag reel is a little under three minutes. That's it. There are twenty-five scene selections; various trailers at start-up only; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; French and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.
Parting Shots:
"Fool's Gold" puts forth a bundle of energy but doesn't pay off with as much entertainment as it would like, maybe because everything we see is so predictable. We know pretty well from the outset how it's all going to turn out, even in each subsequent scene, but I suppose we should expect that of any film in the genre. It's just that this one tries too hard with too little, extending sequences that aren't very good to begin with and then just piling on more. Lord knows, it wants us to like it, and maybe that's enough.
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[release]23538[/release]