(1990) **
A drunk, down on his luck, skipper spends his days in a small seaside town living on his boat, the Bella Donna, with quixotic dreams of sailing away to a better life. His desire to leave has become a bit of a joke as the barflies at a local tavern constantly tease him about this. His fate is sealed one day following a night of presumed drunken sex with two local dancers (I say presumed because throughout this movie we’re teased with the possibility of nudity that never occurs). When he awakens the next day he finds the two women all packed and ready to sail away with him to Barbados. Surprised he asks, "What's going on?" The women remind him that he promised to take them to Barbados the night before. When the bartender laughs and informs the women that they should ignore his drunken talk about sailing away because he isn’t going anywhere, the skipper, clearly a sucker for Tom Sawyer psychology, basically says, “Oh yeah, come on girls, we’re sailing to Barbados!”
The trip is to take 4 weeks and the possibility of spending a month on a small boat with two hot chicks is the ultimate male fantasy (except I’d be vomiting over the side the entire time). This fantasy is quickly squashed when within 4 days of the trip they begin getting on each other’s nerves. Eventually Elizabeth Hurly and the skipper get closer and the other chick, with increasing jealousy begins waging a war of dangerous psychological games. For example, when the skipper and Hurley go swimming, the other chick takes away the ladder a la Open Water 2: Adrift, leaving the two lovebirds stranded in the ocean. You know, annoying things like that. Things turn deadly as this little trip to paradise devolves into Lord of the Flies.
I love how the current DVD box for this movie looks like this,
The older version pre-fame Hurley box looks like this,
Admittedly I only watched this because I liked the title. However this Dead Calm wannabe is a letdown at every level. Aside from the zero nudity, the little action that exists in the film takes place between long scenes of sunbathing (not nearly as exciting as it sounds) and watching the 3 eat various dinners. The director throws in all the clichéd stuff you normally find in these kinds of movies; someone almost drowns? Check. Shark attack? Check. Communication with mainland suspended? Check. Almost getting hit by a large freight ship in the middle of the night? Check. There is one pretty good twist near the end. However, once the film concludes we’re given a paragraph to read that essentially adds an additional twist that makes no sense whatsoever. Kill Cruise? Kill me.
5 comments:
I swear, every single time I read the title of this movie (and it's been twelve or thirteen times, given the review title and the multiple poster/video box images) I think it's referring to Tom Cruise (as in, "Kill [Tom] Cruise".)
Patsy Kensit is ridiculously hot. She's way, way, way hotter than Hurley (who is a celebrity why, exactly?). I remember how much I enjoyed her sexy South African accent in Lethal Weapon 2. The poster image at the bottom emphasizes how she's got that "triangular mouth" thing going on, just like Evangeline Lilly or (for that matter) young Sigourney Weaver.
I have to remind myself that Horrorthon now includes enough girls that I can't just start talking about who is "hot." Classic geek self-defeating paradox: "Who let the real girls in? We're trying to talk about movie girls!"
I would pay top dollar to see a movie called "Kill Tom Cruise".
i vote the boys keep talking about hotness and boobs, just as they always have. what fun is having girls join Horrorthon, if the boys have to change their ways?
That's funny, Jordan. I too think "Kill Tom Cruise" every time I see the title.
Oh, I have no intention of stopping the boob talk.
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