FOOL’S GOLD

FOOL’S GOLD, starring Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson, is an adventurous romantic comedy about an estranged married couple who come together one last time to find a lost treasure they have spent years hunting.

Finn (McConaughey) is a good-old boy who lives for adventure and treasure hunting, especially the legendary 18th century Queens’ Dowry: 40 chests of priceless Spanish treasure that was lost at sea in 1715. Absent-minded and always late, Finn barely even makes it to his own divorce trial from Tess (Hudson). However, Finn is not ready to get divorced, and he is not ready to move on past Tess.

Tess, though, seems more than ready to move on from her marriage to Finn. She has a new job on a mega-yacht owned by billionaire Nigel Honeycutt (Donald Sutherland), and she is ready to piece her life back together. When Finn discovers some new evidence in his quest to find the treasure, he charms his way onto Nigel’s yacht and convinces the billionaire and his entitled daughter, Gemma (Alexis Dziena), to finance one more campaign to find the lost gold. Begrudgingly, Tess can’t resist the idea of one last treasure hunt to find the gold that has eluded her and Finn for so long. They are not the only ones after the treasure, however. They must race against Finn’s old mentor and a local gangster to find it.

FOOL’S GOLD is a fun, but improbable and uneven, movie that feels like a mixture of many other adventure comedies throughout the years. From JEWEL OF THE NILE, ROMANCING THE STONE and GOONIES to the NATIONAL TREASURE movies and even McConaughey’s other adventure, SAHARA, FOOL’S GOLD mixes action, comedy and romance in an adventurous way.

However, even though it is fun, the movie is not very well made. The script misses several plot points and contains very flat characters, especially Sutherland and Dziena’s portrayals of Nigel and his debutante daughter, Gemma. Sutherland, for some reason, chooses to have a British dialect to his character, and it is one of the worst, most inconsistent dialect portrayals in recent memory. Dziena’s Gemma is a stereotypical take on pop culture princesses such as Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. Her portrayal, though, is shallow and off-putting. The movie also has huge sequences of expository dialogue that will completely bore viewers.

Adding to these problems of quality is the movie’s somewhat mixed pagan worldview, including some sexual elements, foul language and glorified homosexual characters. FOOL’S GOLD is a shallow misfire that may leave audience members feeling like fools rather than like gold. For movies with more substance, quality and stronger redemptive content that are still fun and exciting, audiences should go to www.movieguide.org and see what other options may be in theatres or home video.