Nearly every romantic comedy is about a hero with two women in his life. There is the one he marries; and the one he was supposed to marry before meeting the much more sensitive, kind, appreciative girl. You know, the one without the rich "daddy" who will give the hero a job once he weds his daughter. In this movie, the hero gets engaged to the wrong woman, then he dates the right one, and then somehow ends up at the altar with the wrong one. Oh yeah, and this movie has the whole boat trip plot that is so bad I was actually hoping for (uncalled for low-blow) Rob Schneider to show up. After all, it is a gay cruise, right?
Jerry (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and Nick (Horatio Sanz) are best friends. These guys have the initial ability to be a great comedic duo, then again so did our bumbling idiots in Kangaroo Jack. The chemistry is there, but God forbid you'd give them a decent script to work with.
Jerry is a single guy because he recently regurgitated all over his girlfriend, Felicia (Vivica A. Fox). Nick is also a single guy because he is that fat, stupid , token character who isn't supposed to get lucky until he meets the token carnival freak. In order to brighten themselves up, Nick convinces Jerry to accompany him on a singles boat trip. But when they upset the travel agent (Will Ferrell, sadly) they get booked on a seven day gay cruise.
I guess we're supposed to laugh when we see Nick and Jerry board the homosexual boat expecting to meet beautiful girls. As they walk on the loading bridge, Nick grabs a crewmember and generically asks, "Between two guys, is there a lot of sweet a-s on this boat?" The crew member confirms and Nick explodes in a ball of giggles.
You think the sight of several men in low-cut shorts and S&M outfits would give away the fact that you're on a gay cruise. But not to our idiot heroes. They only have one thing on the brain, women, and go hours unaware of where they really are. I was expecting the scene revealing the truth about the boat to be somewhat funny, but it couldn't have been anymore dull. As they sit at a bar, a guy walks past them saying, "it's a gay cruise." Our duo looks at each momentarily, and then begins freaking out.
I guess I shouldn't have been expecting anything humorous. But this movie could have easily taken off had it been done right. If I personally had just found myself on a gay cruise, I would ponder the fact that I was a moron for unintentionally getting here, and then I would laugh it off and make an experience worth telling the grandkids about. But Nick and Jerry are so homophobic that it's pathetic. In a way, it probably doesn't help that the movie stereotypes homosexuals beyond any reason. Does every gay man find every man sexually attractive? I don't know, but I find it hard to believe that every gay man would salivate over the hefty figure of Horatio Sanz. The gays in this movie can't get their eyes off the two straight men, and of course Nick and Jerry react worse than if they had been somehow booked on a cruise completely inhabited by brain-eating zombies. Now there’s an idea, a better one anyway.
The plot isn't as bad as the humor, but it comes close. And after I get through writing this paragraph, you'll wonder in horror how the humor could be worse than the plot. In a desperate attempt to get off the boat infested with gay men, Nick fires off a flare gun to get the attention of a passing helicopter. But Nick accidentally sends the chopper crashing into the ocean. A day later, the boat's captain somehow spots the wreckage (even after sailing through the ocean at full-speed) and recovers the passengers, who happens to be the Swedish sun tanning team. Now with beautiful women on board, Nick can go back to being a sexually driven predator. When the team is first spotted in the ocean, the captain commands his crew, but he doesn't say 'deck,' he commands, "all hands on d-ck."
If the 'deck' joke doesn't sound funny, maybe the banana scene will have better luck with you, or a scene where a man's girlfriend excuses herself to go "shave the landing-strip." And now that we have Swedish girls on the boat, the movie can stereotype them, too. Nick moves in, but I forget if it's on Olga, Helga or Inga.
Jerry on the other hand is trying to hook up with the boat's sexy dance instructor, Gabriela (Roselyn Sanchez). When she tells him that she works on the gay cruises because she is tired of dealing with lying straight-men, Jerry pretends to be gay man to eventually get in her pants, the reason that she works on gay cruises in the first place.
Boat Trip is 93 minutes of predictable, unfunny jokes and phallic-related references that would even tire young teens. There is just nothing good about this movie. When it looks like things are beginning to work out between Jerry and Gabrielle, Jerry's ex-girlfriend shows up to reclaim her man after she mistakenly said no to his proposal; setting up the necessary showdown between the two females where the male will have to choose one. And I actually thought that a boat having just taken Jerry hundreds of miles away from the coast would prevent Felicia from returning. How wrong I was, and how bored I was watching Jerry and Felicia at the altar in a latter scene. It will only be a matter of time before this line comes: "she was the one who really loved you, but that doesn't matter anymore. Her plane leaves in five minutes, you'll never make it."
Thankfully, Boat Trip isn't a two-hour production. But if for whatever reason you do find yourself seeing this film, and that you think you might not make it, just listen to the encouraging words from the soundtrack song, "I Will Survive" and know that it does eventually end. The only person who might enjoy this that I can think of, is the chap who actually thinks there's a chance that Jerry won't get the girl in the end, or the guy who optimistically thinks Will Ferrell will make another appearance sometime before the credits, or the guy waiting for the iceberg that never comes.
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