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Back Shelf Beauties
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Into The Blue We should just throw pretense to the wind and call this one Jessica Alba In A Bikini. If you have seen the commercials and trailers, you know what I'm talking about. There's Jessica Alba swimming in the bikini. There she is walking in the bikini. There she is screaming in a bikini. The studio probably would sell more tickets if they just made it into one of those Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition DVDs where she just frolics around for two hours in a bikini (THAT would be cool) because the girl cannot act. Frankly, I was hoping the bikini was some sort of metaphor about an evil male dominated society and Alba's character, driven to revolt by her independence and anger, would cast off the shackles of oppression (the bikini) to display herself in all of her feminine glory (she is woman, hear her roar), just to stick it to the men who have kept her down for all of these years. However, director John Stockwell doesn't have that kind of script and he is burdened with co-star Paul Walker (the dumbest actor on the planet earth). I guess he has to use that bikini to sell tickets, and lots of guys will be laying out $9 to watch Alba saunter around practically naked for 2 hours. They're certainly not paying for her acting skills. Proving anything Tara Reid can do she can do better, Alba stars as Sam - a marine biologist (at least the writers didn't give Alba's character any technical and complicated scientific dialogue like Reid stumbled through in Alone in the Dark), while Walker plays Jared - an ambitious treasure hunter, who doesn't appear to be very bright. The two are boyfriend and girlfriend living in the Bahamas (so she can spend most of the movie walking around in a bikini). When Jared's buddy Bryce (Scott Caan) shows up for vacation with a new acquaintance/one night stand, Amanda (Ashley Scott), all four go diving, but they stumble across two massive finds. At the bottom of the ocean, mere yards away from each other, the gang finds a crashed airplane full of cocaine, and an old shipwreck, which holds its own riches and gold, as well as fulfilling Jared's dreams of becoming a real treasure hunter. To avoid drawing unneeded attention from competing treasure hunters and more, the four resolve not to tell the police about the plane until after they have properly established claim to the shipwreck, but the plane's riches, which are illegal, are much easier to salvage. Can the four avoid the temptation of salvaging the illegal cocaine? Will someone come looking for the plane? Is someone trying to jump Jared's claim and steal his booty (the gold and stuff, not Alba or his own, personal "booty")? Into The Blue is a heavily padded film full of average to bad acting, and no interesting dialogue to speak of. Alba's acting is stiffer than the men in the audience as she recites her lines as if she were a wooden marionette. The bikini is her best asset as she can't realistically demonstrate anger (she comes off sounding like a whiny little girl) and struggles with the more dramatic dialogue. You just don't see any life or brightness in her eyes as she goes from scene to scene making no real impression outside of the prurient. Caan gets some decent comic relief, but Walker's entire role is reduced to constantly calling him "Bro", and playing kissy face with Alba. He gets one or two chances to show some acting chops, but that is impossible when you don't have any. Writer Matt Johnson doesn't help the situation much as he comes up with a moderately interesting story, but none of the depth and dialogue to make it good. He never extends himself past the cliché as we get stuck with Jared and Sam cooing like 12-year old kids experiencing a junior high crush, and only drops in some rudimentary information about treasure hunting. He needs to show us Jared and Sam are experts at what they do, but it's highly possible such technical dialogue was chopped due to the lead actors inability to sell it. This leaves director John Stockwell to stuff the movie with many meaningless, tensionless, boring, long winded scenes of the people swimming, dancing and exploring the ocean floor since the characters have nothing interesting to say. That's great for a Bahamian tourism commercial, but not so much for movie that could have been cut by 25 - 35%. Into The Blue has a basic story that can keep your interest if it was better developed, but the film has too many negatives. 1 Waffle (Out Of 4) Copyright 2005 - WaffleMovies.com
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