Just like the new thriller Open Water probably caused many viewers to think twice about diving in the ocean, Without a Paddle could have a similar effect on guys considering a canoe trip in the wilderness with their buddies. But if I had to choose between these two films, I'd take being in the middle of the ocean surrounded by Jaws and his cousins, thank you very much. That would be preferable to the unpleasantness of watching an almost laughless comedy  dumped out at the end of the summer movie season.    

Jerry (Matthew Lillard), Dan (Seth Green), Tom (Dax Shepard), and Billy (Anthony Starr) grew up as the best of friends, kids who grew up playing Indiana Jones and Ghostbusters in the backyard. They drifted apart over the years, but the former three are brought back together when they hear news of Billy's death. Feeling sentimental and nostalgic, the guys check out their old fort, where the discover that Billy spent the last few years trying to track down the treasure of D.B. Cooper, the thief who jumped out of an airplane years ago and was never heard from again. As a means of fulfilling Billy's dream, Jerry, Tom, and, more reluctantly, Dan decide to take some time off and head into the backwoods of Oregon in search of D.B.'s stolen cash. But the trip is not without a number of obstacles, as the intrepid trio faces the wrath of Mother Nature in the forms of raging rapids and curious bears, not to mention a pair of rednecks (Ethan Suplee and Abraham Benrubi) looking to gun down the guys for uncovering their pot fields.

With this summer's Dodgeball, Anchorman, and the underseen Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle being as funny as they were, I guess there had to be the other extreme to balance things out. While not as grating as Little Black Book or as flat-out awful as White Chicks, Without a Paddle serves up plenty of dopey jokes and flat gags to go around. But it's not just the movie's plot, which sounds like an episode from a third-rate sitcom, that does it in. Without a Paddle's biggest mistake is giving us characters who are detrimental to its hilarity rather than supportive of it. I don't think all movies should be required to have sympathetic people in them, but there's a line between unlikable, yet interesting characters and a bunch of dopes you don't give a flip about. These dopes are the heroes of Without a Paddle, and they failed miserably in making me laugh or getting me involved with their journey.

For the most part, the three leads are stuck with one-note characters: the solid Green is a wimp, newcomer Shepard is an abrasive jerk, and on again-off again Lillard is a slightly better version of Shepard. Normally, this wouldn't be that important, but when you have a movie like Without a Paddle, which wants to be a goofy flick that tacks on an Aesop moral at the same time, its failed attempts to get more than a soft chuckle out of the viewer or to convey the awkwardly-inserted message are amplified tenfold. However,  Without a Paddle is not a totally awful venture. For one thing, as I mentioned before, it's more tolerable than this summer's other cruddy comedies, as if the filmmakers knew they were wasting celluloid but at least had the decency to make it go down easily. Some of the trappings the guys ran into had me snickering (it's all too brief a moment, but I can't get enough of that growling deer), and as a shaggy mountain man, Burt Reynolds (who must have been starving for a gig when he saw this part and said, "I must do this movie!") makes the best of his time playing the flipside to his Deliverance character.

Although Without a Paddle is a brainless flick, it's a harmless one. It'll please some and annoy most. My advice? Just sit back and say to yourself, "Well, at least it's not White Chicks."

MY RATING: * 1/2 (out of ****)

(Released by Paramount Pictures and rated "PG-13" for drug content, sexual material, language, crude humor and some violence.)

Review also posted at www.ajhakari.com.