Stupid is as Stupid Does...

Ah, in-flight movies. You're a captive audience, hanging out thousands of feet above the Earth's surface, and after you've run out of those books to read and small talk with your neighbors, there's little else to do than watch the stupid movie. Sometimes exceptionally stupid, which is how I ended up watching 2008's "Fool's Gold," a movie I'm sure I never would have gotten around to watching by my own volition.

The Matthew McConaughey/Kate Hudson vehicle didn't have much going for it beyond the good looks of its stars. The basic plot is that Finn (McConaughey) is a treasure hunter, looking for the remnants of a Spanish armada in the Caribbean. His estranged, and soon to be ex, wife Tess (Hudson) is trying to make a clean break and a fresh start as a purser aboard a billionaire's (Donald Sutherland) yacht. Sutherland tries to bring some dignity to the role, and he comes off best in the movie. When Finn finds new evidence that points him towards the sunken fleet, he gets Tess and her benefactor back onboard, and tries to win Tess back as well.

This is a shallow, silly movie whose only harm may be that it wasn't made in the early 1980's, when there were a lot more of these kinds of movies out. The villains in the movie are all black (including Malcolm Jamal Warner), and the heroes all white, which had me uncomfortable--and the actions, motivations and treatment of the black characters at the hands of the white are something I wouldn't necessarily want my children to see.

If you're a fan of McConaughey or Hudson (and honestly, I do like both actors), you might find some enjoyment in this movie. They spend a lot of their time in swimsuits, their tanned bodies glistening nicely...but the script, direction, and their hammy acting belongs to a less civilized age. If you're really a fan, you'll watch something better.