Buoyed by the review-proof success of How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey are reunited for Fool’s Gold. Critics were not kind to this production, and I can understand why; it doesn’t seem to know what it is… romantic comedy, action-adventure, parody of action-adventure… It frequently pulled me out of the film with distracting nonsense, collapsing my willing suspension of disbelief. But the stars are charismatic and their interplay amusing, so if you’re insensitive to nonsensical screenplay devices, you might enjoy this inconsistent romp.

Tess Finnegan (Kate Hudson) and Benjamin Finnegan (Matthew McConaughey) are divorcing. She’s had enough of his irresponsibility and immaturity, even if the sex was great (as she so often repeatedly reports). She left graduate school to follow his quest for the untold treasures of a sunken Spanish galley, lost hundreds of years earlier in the Caribbean. Ben is not one to give up on the possibility of uncountable riches. He approaches rap-artist and gangster Bigg Bunny (Kevin Hart) for financing. And once Ben’s in for over sixty-two thousand dollars, he’d better deliver or he’s dead meat.

Tess has left him, accepting a job as a stewardess on a lavish yacht owned by billionaire Nigel Honeycutt (Donald Sutherland). Why she didn’t flee back to graduate school is one of many plot holes that run through the film. But Ben has made some progress. In an opening sequence that is laughable (as opposed to funny) in its silliness, Ben and his dive partner, kneeling on the bottom under thirty feet of water, are oblivious to a heavy pump and then their boat as each sinks to the bottom behind them, kicking up enormous clouds of sand. Another of many absurdities.

Ben surfaces with a plate fragment that he believes proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s found the long lost galley (even that discovery is a remarkable inconsistency, the reason for which would be a spoiler). But Bigg Bunny is not convinced; he’s out over sixty grand and he’ll soon revert to taking payment in body parts unless Ben finds the treasure.

When Ben joins Tess at their divorce hearing in Key West, she isn’t very impressed either. It isn’t until she sits at a computer (thank goodness for Google) that she suddenly realizes Ben may be on to something. She discovers that Ben’s sketches of the patterns on his find of a fragment of a custom-designed family-crested plate (which Bigg Bunny kept) match those in a hundreds of years old portrait of the ship’s captain.

What follows is with Ben’s pursuit of the treasure and Tess, his conning the very rich Nigel Honeycutt to finance the quest, his charming Honeycutt’s unbelievably dim daughter, Gemma (Alexis Dziena), to help persuade the skeptical billionaire, and all while the bad guys - Bigg Bunny and his henchmen - are trying to steal the treasure out from under them.

I have to admit that the film does contain one bit of cleverness. Tess is definitely the brains of the quest, and she’s as effective puzzling out clues as Nicholas Cage’s Ben Gates is in the National Treasure series. But how does one square that against a sequence in which Ben is blown out of the water by explosives so powerful that it knocks off his buoyancy control device (exceptionally unlikely with its broad Velcro cummerbund and two latching buckles) and catapults him out of the water, dozens of feet into the air, to land on the flying bridge of a boat. Such an underwater concussion would have homogenized him instantly.

The villains seem all talk and clumsy action. Time after time, Ben and Tess could have been eliminated but were not, simply out of stupidity, unnecessary hesitation, or shear incompetence. Is that kind of villainy supposed to inspire audience concern? Hudson seems unusually subdued, her character lacking any real spark. And McConaughey simply overplays, his character writ with very broad strokes. All the comedic jabs you may have heard on Letterman about McConaughey’s finding every excuse to go shirtless are fully justified here.

I came away feeling like I was victimized by a Hollywood formula to cash in on the stars’ reputations (the people responsible even felt it necessary to enhance Kate Hudson’s bust line with Photoshop on the keepcase’s artwork to make the disc more appealing). The screenplay seems a rushed effort, with little thought given to self-consistency and engaging the audience. Clichés, improbabilities, sloppy structure, inconsistencies… all highly distracting.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

The film’s theatrical aspect ratio of 2.40:1 is presented in a colorful high definition transfer compressed with the VC-1 CODEC. Shot in Australia as a surrogate to the Caribbean, all is lush and colorful, from the island greenery to the blue waters. Flesh tones lean ever so slightly toward orange, but that could be tropical tans. Like the storyline’s contrived details, the palette seems a tad exaggerated as well. Small object detail is good without being very impressive. The same can be said of finely grained textures. The video dynamic range is fine, with no apparent crush on either end. The nighttime and dark underwater cave scenes have reasonable shadow detail, but perhaps at the expense of deep, rich blacks. Infinitely better than standard definition, this transfer still fails to approach demo quality. Perhaps when Warner switches over to AVC and compresses less…

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

A throwback to earlier Warner Blu-ray Discs, we have only Dolby Digital 5.1 audio tracks; perhaps this was a consequence of the space limitations of a single-layer disc. I’ll speculate that the filmmakers felt that this was a dialog-driven movie, and despite several action scenes, chose to make the track front-centric. The surrounds are highly underutilized. Deep bass is present for a few of the underscore source tracks, but even the explosions are a bit anemic. The sound effects merely satisfy the needs of the onscreen action. The dialog is presented distortion-free throughout. It’s a weak track that represents a missed opportunity.

The alternative language tracks are in French and Spanish, both in Dolby Digital 5.1. The optional subtitles are in English, French, and Spanish.

The Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

The supplements are rather thin, once again perhaps affected by the space limitations of a single-layer disc. We begin with a very short, EPK-level featurette whose title may be longer than the content, Fool's Gold: Flirting with Adventure - The Chemistry Between Two Charming Contemporary Stars (4:36, anamorphic video). It’s revealed that this film was intended as a vehicle to reunite Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, who are considered to have such great onscreen chemistry. Each is interviewed, as well as director Andy Tennant and Donald Sutherland. We do get to see a little behind the scenes action that makes clear they enjoy working together, but there is nothing substantive here.

Perhaps more demonstrative of the fun Hudson and McConaughey have together is the Gag Reel (2:46). Although most of the principal players are featured, it’s the two stars that dominate. I usually like a good gag reel, but this was smile-inducing rather than laugh-out loud funny.

The 112-minute film is organized into twenty-five chapters.

Final Thoughts

Fool’s Gold film is inconsistent, both in tone and plotting. Everything looks very pretty, but I was too distracted by the contradictions and inconsistencies to really enjoy the film. The BD sports a nice but unexceptional transfer, a bland audio track, and very thin extras. Make an informed buy decision; don’t be foolish with your gold.


Here’s a note about the apparent duplicate Buy Guide. Our I.T. people are still hard at work on a large project and have not yet had the time to modify the underlying site database formatting code to accommodate the new 0-to-10 rating scales. So until they do, for HD on disc, I’ll insert this note and a Buy Guide at the end of the review text and leave the conventional 0-to-5 Buy Guide blank.