DVD Release Date: June 17, 2008
Theatrical Release Date: February 8, 2008
Rating: PG-13 (for action violence, some sexual material, nudity, language)
Genre: Comedy
Run Time: 113 min.
Director: Andy Tennant
Actors: Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson, Donald Sutherland, Alexis Dziena, Kevin Hart
It’s been said that “lightning never strikes twice in the same place,” and the adage definitely applies to Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson in Fool’s Gold.
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While the actors’ easy chemistry and comedic charms made a rather formulaic premise surprisingly entertaining in 2003’s How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, any hope of striking rom-com gold twice was quickly washed away by a hokey script and hardly a laugh in the Fool's Gold’s nearly two-hour running time.
Incidentally, for anyone who’s wondered if Hudson and McConaughey are indeed this decade’s Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks as many movie mags have recently suggested, well forget it. Although the easy-on-the-eyes pair gives it their best effort, they just don’t look like they’re having that much fun here.
Perhaps that’s because the treasure-solving initiative they’re supposed to be all excited about really isn’t that interesting. Sure, there may be diamonds, rubies and emeralds “the size of your fist” at large, but the history behind the treasure is told to such detailed (and boring) effect, that it’s hard to believe these sun-kissed creatures ever cared in the first place.
So in the absence of a well-crafted (or at least semi-entertaining) story, the filmmakers attempt to trick the audience by putting a whole lot of bronzed skin on parade. And while it’s clear that Hudson and McConaughey especially have done their due diligence at the gym, that’s hardly enough to even consider Fool’s Gold a guilty pleasure.
Unlike, say, National Treasure where the history lesson is light and breezy, McConaughey’s Ben “Finn” Finnegan and his now- ex-wife Tess (Hudson) are obsessed with some booty that’s far more obscure—the legendary Queen’s Dowry, a ship full of Spanish treasure that supposedly sunk in the Caribbean in the early 1700s.
Since the treasure’s apparently worth a rather large fortune, although how much is never really clarified, Finn just can’t forget about it. And when Finn’s repeated failed attempts to capture it put him in hot water with a rapper named Bigg Bunny (Kevin Hart), Finn hopes that trying to find the dowry one more time will not only help him pay off his debts, but will repair his crumbled marriage to the woman he still loves.