Fool’s Gold
Is Kate Hudson charming? I think I always just assumed she was without much evidence to back it up. She received rapturous acclaim (not from me) as the supposedly intoxicating “band aid” Penny Lane in Cameron Crowe’s highly overrated song of himself, “Almost Famous.” She was cute and down-to-earth in my least favorite Robert Altman movie, “Dr. T and the Women.” She was limp and hopeless as a Brit in the colonialist misadventure “The Four Feathers.” Since then, she’s been happy to appear in bankable, instantly forgettable romantic comedies or lightweight dramas, all of which I was happy to skip until (for some reason) I attended a press screening of the dreadful “You, Me & Dupree.” Again with motives that escape me, I did the same with the execrable “Fool’s Gold.” So: Five movies, none of them all that good, and two halfway-winning performances. Let me say it loud: Kate Hudson sucks! She’s terrible in “Fool’s Gold.” She’s a shameless ham, trying to milk every line for a cheap laugh or a false emotion. She’s “bitter.” She’s “weary.” She’s “reinvigorated.”
Hudson’s so bad, I can’t even work up my usual vitriol for her narcissistic co-star, Matthew McConaughey, whose bulging moobs have never been prettier. He’s shirtless more or less the whole time, which I’m sure is what attracted him to the role. He “plays” a treasure hunter, and Hudson is his estranged wife, and the underlying idea appears to be an old-fashioned comedy of remarriage, but director Andy Tennant ditches the comedy in favor of wall-to-wall schmaltz, punctuated by desultory and excessively violent action sequences. McConaughey gets hit on the head so often I felt like I had a concussion. Even the stock comic figures — an “English” multimillionaire, played by a distracted Donald Sutherland, and his dim-bulb daughter (Alexis Dziena) — are asked to goose up the “awww” factor, although Sutherland at least looks embarrassed about it. Dziena had a memorable bit part as a girl appropriately named Lolita in “Broken Flowers,” and she’s taken the nymphet thing to heart. She has the body of a 12-year-old, or an Olsen twin — 5 feet tall and emaciated. When the movie has her parade around in a bikini, supposedly to distract a boatful of rival treasure hunters, I could only conclude that the men ogling her must all be pedophiles.
Tennant’s previous credits include “Ever After” and “Hitch,” and he can usually be counted on for at least polished professionalism, but with “Fool’s Gold” he regresses. He can’t get the camera in the right spot for the simplest of gags, and his timing is woeful. Shots hold the screen a beat too long, and yawning silences fill the space between lines of dialogue. It hardly sounds like the actors are talking to each other. I try not to get worked up over movies this disposable, but really, Warner Bros.! Is this the best you can do?