Rating:

Every few years I miss a movie. In 1999, I missed the Matrix. To this day, I don’t know how that happened. I feel the same way with Without A Paddle. How did I miss such a funny comedy flick starring Seth Green?

It has everything I would want in a comedy: It did not resort to using modern un-funny America Pie-like sex/pervert humor — they didn’t stretch to make a joke. It used quality actors like Ethan Suplee, Seth Green, and that guy that played Shaggy in the Scooby Doo movies — and Burt Reynolds was almost unrecognizable as a bearded hermit! There were nostalgic nods to Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and other classic icons of my 70s-80s childhood. Let’s not forget the pot-growing hillbillies for villains — that’s some funny stuff there, I tell you what! It had a treasure hunt, rafting over a waterfall, and a bear attack. And finally, it cast attractive women (tree nymphs, no less!) in non-obnoxious roles.

Ignoring trailers and commercials this Blu-ray really only had two bonus features: the "making of" feature, and something called "additional scenes":
- Do yourself a favor, and skip the "additional scenes" as those were nothing more than terrible alternate versions of various scenes. These things ranged from awful to weird, and had they been used, the film would have been entirely different, and not in a good way.

- Rather than assemble something of their own (usually some sloppy quickie piece that lacks participation by the main actors), the studio has included the 2004 MTV episode of "Making the Movie". I don’t recall ever having seen a television special included on a movie DVD. This should be done more often! It’s horrible how so many collectors have to record their own specials, or scavenge bootleg lists to find these things. Just stick it on the DVD/Blu-ray for us! Many of these television specials are excellent, as was the case here. Kudos, Paramount! Can you do this more often?

Now then, I’ll admit this isn’t much of a superhero-related movie. But it does have those story elements that makes it appealing to folks like you and me. If you need a fun movie tonight, or this weekend, pick up Without A Paddle, to either enjoy for the first time, or re-enjoy another time.