About the movie
Fool's Gold
Rating: 
Cast:
Roger Sciberras; Kevin Hart; Matthew McConaughey; Kate Hudson; Alexis Dziena; Donald Sutherland; Ewen Bremner
Directed by:
Andy Tennant
On the web:
READER FEEDBACK
Glitter, yes; but golden, no
Fool's Gold, a leaden action-adventure, stars the perennially shirtless Matthew McConaughey and the peculiarly mirthless Kate Hudson as a couple whose marriage, like the film, is in the doldrums.
Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.
But when Finn (McConaughey), whose chief interests are pirate booty and the sexual kind, discovers a long-buried treasure off a Bahamian reef, he rekindles his relationship with Tess (Hudson), scholar (!!) of Spanish history.
Finn's find does not rekindle the movie which is, to put it politely, all wet. Despite the presence of Donald Sutherland as a billionaire with a conveniently located yacht, a floating five-star hotel, if this movie were a treasure chest, its contents would be dross.
No doubt conceived as an underwater version of National Treasure, Andy Tennant's film plays like a Three Stooges movie with scuba gear.
It should be said, though, that a Three Stooges movie is enlightened next to this one that trades in cheap jokes about a celebutard heiress (Alexis Dziena) and the black henchman of a shady rap mogul (Kevin Hart).
The choppily paced Fool's Gold has two gears. Low is eye-glazing exposition about the whereabouts of a 16th-century Spanish galleon that carried "the Queen's Dowry." High is characters bashing one another with oxygen tanks and flashlights.
While there are worse things than watching McConaughey and Hudson disport themselves - except to see them walking around in the briefest of bathing gear, I can't think of why anyone would want to endure this soggy mess. "There's no fool like a gold fool," quips one character in a line that may be taken to dissuade ticketbuyers.
Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.
