Film

Like watching blond eight-year-olds play a game of Clue, Fool’s Gold will have you seriously wondering if it was a film made for adults. A sunken-treasure mystery, it’s also a romantic comedy, terms that become arbitrary when you’re talking about Hudson and McConaughey. Paired together, they create a masterful spell of blandness.

As skin-deep skin divers bronzed by the Florida sun but about to terminate a marriage forged primarily in the sack, the stars come off as the shallowest protagonists since the last Girls Gone Wild video. Nevertheless, Finn (McConaughey), a scamp, scoundrel and rogue (do you see how unbearably cute this is?), has his dreams—and he just may have discovered a chipped piece of flatware belonging to a downed ship loaded with royal gold. Tess (Hudson), who flirts with her freedom from Finn like a bored temp, is quickly sucked in, though the duo will have competition from gun-happy thugs and Finn’s craggy old boss (Ray Winstone, cashing the check).

Tennant (Hitch), as careless a hired gun as they come, is all too comfortable with “Mickey Mouse” comedy music and soggy clichés. The final showdown occurs at a reef-encrusted “blowhole”—there’s a term you’ll come to understand intimately.