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Acting
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Directing
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Story
Starring: Kate Hudson, Matthew McConaughey, Donald Sutherland
Director: Andy Tennant
Running Time: 112 mins
Fool’s Gold is an American film about a newly-divorced couple who are forced to reunite when clues to the whereabouts of lost treasure surface, bringing them back together on an exciting adventure.
As much as I like a cheesy rom-com every now and then, Fool’s Gold isn’t one that will live long in the memory for me. Despite genuinely likable performances across the board, the film is so desperately bland, only saved by its sunny Floridian setting.
Of course, this film isn’t meant to be any kind of masterpiece. It’s a fluffy, easy-going romantic comedy that’s there to make you laugh and smile, and while I can’t say it fully achieves that, it certainly doesn’t do the opposite.
And that is one of the biggest pieces of praise I can give this film: that it’s not excruciatingly annoying. From arguments between lovers to screechy spoiled side characters, there’s a lot here that could have been really, really irritating, but the film manages to remain pretty harmless throughout.
There’s a possibility that that’s down to the fact that it is so bland, but it’s also, from a more positive perspective, a result of a cast of genuinely entertaining actors who work really well together.
With the exception of a couple of fairly underwhelming and out-of-left-field performances from Ray Winstone and Kevin Hart, leads Kate Hudson, Matthew McConaughey, Donald Sutherland and even Alexis Dziena in what could have been an awfully annoying role are really, genuinely entertaining.
Hudson and McConaughey in particular are a lot of fun to watch, with good charisma as a dysfunctional recently-divorced couple that works better than the more superficial will-they-won’t-they dynamic of How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days.
Admittedly, though, the actors don’t have much to do with their characters, who are just one part of a painfully bland and seemingly random screenplay that jumps wildly from romantic comedy to action thriller and a thousand other genres in between.
From the start, I never really felt like any of these characters were involved in a story as high-stakes as the film wants to suggest. The plot is meant to be about the desperate wrangling by multiple parties for valuable lost treasure, but none of it seemed in the slightest bit real to me.
Suspension of disbelief is an important thing when watching films, and it’s more often than not very easy to do, especially if you’re watching a film that isn’t all too worried about being serious or realistic.
However, for some reason, the plot, setting and subject matter of this movie seemed so incredibly arbitrary to me, almost as if it was shoe-horned into the screenplay after McConaughey and Hudson has signed up to do another romantic comedy together.
Of course, I have no idea what really went on when this movie was being made, but I can tell you that, for the most part, Fool’s Gold is entirely forgettable.
Enjoyable in its lead performances and ability to avoid purely irritating storytelling, the film really suffers with a bland, random story that still doesn’t make much sense to me even now. So, that’s why I’m giving Fool’s Gold a 6.5 overall.
