by Karyn L. Beach

I have a friend who watches Into the Blue every single time it’s on cable. Does he watch for the action? No. Is it the acting that keeps him coming back? Hell no! He watches it because Jessica Alba is in a bikini for most of the film. If I ever sit through Fools Gold again, it won’t be for the acting or the action or the romance. It will be for Matthew McConaughey’s abs.

Ben ‘Finn’ Finnegan (Matthew McConaughey) is a treasure hunter with great abs and an angry ex-wife Tess (Kate Hudson). Finn is convinced that he’s found a map that will lead him to an 18th Spanish century treasure. The problem is that his ex-wife isn’t his only problem. A rival treasure hunter (Ray Winstone) and a shady rapper and wannabe gangster known as Bigg Bunny (Kevin Hart) are also after the treasure. What Finn needs is a wealthy benefactor to finance his treasure hunt. He finds it in the form of Nigel Honeycutt (Donald Sutherland), after Finn saves his daughter’s life (actually he saved her hat). As fate would have it, Tess is also working aboard Honeycutt’s yacht. After convincing him to finance their expedition, they are off.

Good looking people in swimwear, a chase through a cemetery, two people with no instruction trying to fly a plane, how can you have a movie with all that and still have it be boring? I don’t know how they managed to have a cast with McConaughey, Hudson, Sutherland and British import Winstone and not do more with it. At one point, Finn and Tess, go on and on and on, explaining the history of the treasure. There were filmstrips I watched in grade school that were more interesting.

Like they did in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, McConaughey and Hudson have chemistry; but the script spends more time on a subplot involving Donald Sutherland’s relationship with his Paris-Hilton like daughter (Alexis Dziena) than it does the two main characters and their relationship.

 Kevin Hart (you remember him as the star of Soul Plane) is woefully miscasts as the gangster-rapper who sends his hit men to take care of Fin. There is nothing at all scary or intimidating about Kevin Hart, not even a little bit. Maybe it was supposed to be funny to have this little guy as a ‘tough’ bad ass but it wasn’t funny either. It just seemed wrong.

I didn’t go into Fools Gold expecting Oscar-worthy material and thought-provoking characters. I went in expecting a light and breezy good time. Maybe I can have that when Fools Gold hits cable and I can watch McConaughey’s abs for free (and change the channel when I feel like it).