Fool's Gold (2008)

Sorry, this movie sucks

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

A good movie for it's type. Similar to the movie 'Into the blue' but with better script. What I liked about this movie is the emotion that you get for history and love. A adventure film that focuses on trust and family. Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson are a good on screen couple and give clever performances that give you direct feelings.

Like "Underwater" from the fifties and "The Deep" from the seventies, "Fool's Gold" is a film about diving for lost treasure in the Caribbean. At least, it's supposed to be the Caribbean, although most of the shooting actually took place (for climatic rather than financial reasons) in Australia. One detail apparently borrowed from "The Deep" is that the heroes are searching for the "dowry" of King Philip V of Spain, supposedly lost off the Bahamas in 1715. (Actually, a "dowry" is a payment made by the bride's family to the groom, not vice versa).The film also combines elements of a genre which was popular in the thirties and forties and which has occasionally been revived in recent years, the "comedy of remarriage". The main characters are Benjamin "Finn" Finnegan, a professional treasure hunter, and his ex-wife, Tess. The two are thrown together by chance during Finn's search for the wrecked Spanish galleon "Aurelia"; Tess is working as a steward on a yacht owned by Finn's millionaire patron Nigel Honeycutt. And, of course, they find their love for one another being rekindled in the course of the action. This being a thriller as well as a romance, there have to be other people in search of the treasure, and these include a local gangster named Bigg Bunny. (Not, I would have thought, the most frightening alias that a ruthless villain could have chosen). Another detail borrowed from "The Deep" is that the heroes are all white whereas the villains are mostly black. When I re-watched "The Deep" recently I assumed that this sort of thing was just an example of 1970s political incorrectness, but it seems that you can still get away with it in the 21st century.The critics' comments ranged from "an indifferent mess" to "a cheesy, familiar bore" via "excruciatingly lame" and "stupid, slack and sexless". Male critics in particular seemed to object to the fact that Matthew McConaughey spends much of the running-time shirtless and bare- chested. Kate Hudson even ended up with a "Worst Actress" Razzie nomination. And yet I was unable to join in this near-unanimous chorus of disapproval; not for the first time I found myself warming to a film which the critics generally hated. Yes, there are things wrong with it. Hudson will never have quite the same charisma as her famous mother Goldie Hawn. The cliff-hanging (or should that be plane-hanging) finale was a direct plagiarism from at least two Bond movies, except that in the Bond movies it was done better. Donald Sutherland tends to overact and plays Honeycutt with the sort of fruity upper-class British accent that the British upper classes generally abandoned circa 1960. (The Canadian Sutherland was presumably cast on the basis of the common American view that, as Canada is still part of the Queen's dominions, all Canadians must therefore speak the Queen's English with a British accent). I felt, however, that the critics who disparaged the film so much were taking it too seriously. It is not a comedy in the sense of a film which regales us with one hilarious joke after another, but it is generally light-hearted and does not take itself too seriously. (In this it is very different to "The Deep", which took itself far too seriously). The photography of the tropical scenery is attractive- another way in which it scores over "The Deep", where the scenes shot on land seemed just as dull and murky as those shot deep under the ocean. McConaughey and Hudson were never going to win any Oscars, but they make an likable couple, and there is an amusing contribution from Alexis Dziena as Honeycutt's airheaded daughter Gemma. There is nothing deep and significant about this film, but why should there be? There is, after all, a place in the cinema for films which simply seek to entertain rather than to make a profound statement about life, and entertaining is something which "Fool's Gold" does rather well. 6/10

I am somebody who liked a romantic comedy from time to time. Just like any other genre it has a few great movies in it. And this one also included adventure, so I thought it will be a great movie then. Unfortunately I was wrong.The movie is incredibly bad. It is boring, predictable, with bad acting and cliché characters.We have Tess, the usual woman who has a stick up her ass and doesn't enjoy fun and wants her husband to "grow up". There is Finn, the hot immature guy. The dumb girl who likes to shop. And they are all portrayed with horrible acting that makes it even harder to like them. I keep on seeing Matthew McConaughey always play this guy and always do it horribly, I have no idea why he keeps on getting these roles.The only good thing about the movie is the scenery. Sitting in cold Canada waiting for winter to end I enjoyed watching the sunny Caribbean.

Finn (Matthew McConaughey) is good at three things; underwater treasure hunting, getting money for treasure hunting, and something that got Tess (Kate Hudson) to marry him for. On the latest hunt, he finds an important clue to a Spanish sunken treasure. Only his boat and all his equipment sink. Now he owes a lot of money to Bigg Bunny (Kevin Hart). He barely escapes from his thugs trying to kill him. Meanwhile Tess is working on wealthy Nigel Honeycutt (Donald Sutherland)'s yacht as a steward. Finn gets on board and convinces everybody to join in the search for the treasure.There're a lot bad things about this movie. First Matthew McConaughey is playing a very annoying shirtless irresponsible jerk. The only funny moment in the movie is when Kate Hudson took a golf club and smacked him over the head. There isn't much funny in this comedy.The story of the treasure is too convoluted, and I don't know why it had to be like that. It took a long time to explain, and it left me scratching my head in the end. It didn't advance the story, or make me laugh. It wasted too much time with a lot of exposition.Kevin Hart plays possibly the most annoying character ever. He's not funny. He's not threatening. It's just tiresome.The movie is working at cross purposes. It tries to be a wacky comedy, and it mostly fails. Then it gets way too serious. Characters actually die in this movie. The action gets scary. As a comedy, it doesn't work. As an adventure, it doesn't work.