Review: Without a Paddle

John Boorman may be the worst thing to happen to hillbillies and banjo music.

Without a Paddle
Photo: Paramount Pictures

John Boorman may be the worst thing to happen to hillbillies and banjo music, but if Without a Paddle is any indication, the effects Deliverance has had on popular culture has been equally damning. From Day of the Woman to Wrong Turn, hip cinephilles know that filmmakers have been referencing Boorman’s classic for 30 years now, but director Steven Brill’s feature-length spoof of the film isn’t exactly aimed at discriminating viewers, let alone anyone whose attention span goes back further than, say, Brill’s Little Nicky.

The story of three idiots who go searching for some random dead guy’s buried treasure in the wilds of Oregon after one of their childhood buddies dies, Without a Paddle panders to the audience’s most juvenile hang-ups. It also has the audacity to end on a dishonest, ridiculously sentimental note that celebrates life but punishes marijuana. All the while, Dax Shepard weirdly ushers a parade of queer pop-cultural references, from Coal Miner’s Daughter to “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me,” except no one in the film’s target audience is likely to spot them. No matter, because even if you don’t know who won an Oscar for her performance in Coal Miner’s Daughter or who manned Culture Club, the condescending references are sissy enough on the surface to illicit giggles regardless of their historical pretext.

Deliverance was frightening to a certain audience (read: men) not so much because they had never seen anything like it on the screen before its 1972 premiere, but because they didn’t want to think about, well, you know what. There’s no anal rape in Without a Paddle, but the promise and threat of gay sex informs just about every gag in the film, from an adulterous Shepard being caught in bed by a woman’s lesbian lover (good) to Seth Green, Matthew Lillard, and Shepard spooning each other in the woods in order to keep warm (bad).

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Guys haven’t changed much since the ’70s, but where Boorman’s film challenges a group of men’s misguided notions of privilege by conflating sex and class, Brill merely contends himself by repeatedly pressing the straight male’s gay panic button. Rather than challenge sexual hang-ups and hypocrisies, an anti-enlightenment Hollywood exploits fear for money. In this case, that fear is man-on-man sex, and shrewd Hollywood execs believe that the demographic that dreads it is the same one that responds to the sight of stoned animals and bags of flying shit. Save for an extended sequence that pits a pint-sized Green against a grisly bear and an almost sublime use of R. Kelly’s “Bump n’ Grind” on the soundtrack, add Without a Paddle to that id-grinding pig-pile that includes Sorority Boys and the American Pie films.

Score: 
 Cast: Seth Green, Matthew Lillard, Dax Shepard, Ethan Suplee, Abraham Benrubi, Rachel Blanchard, Bonnie Somerville, Nadine Bernecker, Danielle Cormack, David Stott, Christina Moore, Burt Reynolds  Director: Steven Brill  Screenwriter: Jay Leggett, Mitch Rouse  Distributor: Paramount Pictures  Running Time: 98 min  Rating: PG-13  Year: 2004  Buy: Video

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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