I bought this DVD because I mistakenly thought that the premise had some interesting mystery/suspense possibilities, that the attractive, well-recognized cast would deliver entertaining performances, and that, even if the plot and acting failed, there still might be enough to make the film one of those movies that is fun to watch because of how bad it is. To my immediate and mounting disappointment as the film droned on, none of this was true. Save yourself from this fate. The one-star rating was invented for a film like this.
The plot is undeveloped, incoherent nonsense. The film opens with a loud, dark, confusing sequence at sea where the sailor is caught in a storm and someone dies. There is never any serious attempt to explain or develop this story. Later, the now down-and-out sailor suddenly agrees to ferry two loudmouth, fringe bar singers and their bothersome dog on a 4-week trip to Barbados. During the trip, one of the singers takes an unreasoning dislike to the sailor, picks one childish fight after another with him, rummages through his possessions, and comes up with a theory that he killed the person on the earlier voyage because of a love triangle of some sort. The sailor later explains away the theory to the other singer, who seems friendlier to him, and then the whole murder theory is just dropped as if it were a mistake. After many tedious, labored, pointless scenes of the three on board quarreling, facing several trumped-up, ultimately boring seafaring adversities, and doing various routine chores like hosing dog poop off the deck, there is a last-minute, psycho-type killing on board that comes out of nowhere and explains nothing. The film ends with a cryptic message on screen about the fate of the survivors that, again, gives no meaning to anything that has come before.
The film is a complete failure not only as serious drama but as light entertainment. By no stretch of the imagination is it sexy, funny, or fun to watch. The superficial, loser characters could not be less interesting or attractive. The sailor is so grouchy, withdrawn, and broken-down, the hostile singer so exaggerated in her disagreeableness, the other singer so vapid and vacuous, the petty quarreling among the characters so constant and annoying, and the tone of the film so dark that there is not an ounce of chemistry or lasting good cheer among the characters. Not only is the characters' behavior a total drag, there is nothing erotic about the situations, scenery, or wardrobe. This includes an early, short, embarrassing scene in a bar in which one singer supposedly strips but clearly does no such thing and a split-second glimpse of a perfunctory, sleepy "love scene" that packs no punch whatsoever (I do not know what DVD version others saw, but if the one I saw contained any nudity, I must have missed it by blinking, leaving me only the actual pathetic substance of the film to judge).
Sadly, some movies have absolutely nothing redeeming about them. This is one of them. The only thing to do when this happens is to come right out and say so. There is nothing inappropriate about this. It is just the way it is. Reciting all the movie's flaws but then giving them a pass for no reason at all, straining to conjure and contrive tidbits that are supposedly worth watching, or engaging in speculative, wishful thinking that edited scenes or "possible explanations" exist that, like magic, would somehow make sense of this mess, only compounds the waste of time and money from a film like this and, even worse, contributes to the impression that moviegoers are suckers.
Yet, this is all that the would-be positive reviews of this film have been able to do. Someone who looks to a movie like this for a supposedly serious "portrayal" of "personalities" is the one who is "living a very sheltered life," not someone who takes this useless piece of fiction to task for it glaring flaws. The simplistic observation that spending a long time in close quarters on a boat can lead to cabin fever (and that it can be even worse if the people are psychos) is hardly the stuff of true meaning or entertainment value, with or without claimed "realistic sailing scenes." The suggestion that including a psycho in the cast means that anything goes and that all standards of quality, coherence, or enjoyability go out the window has no place in any credible effort at movie reviewing. When the best a review can say is that a film is "not totally worthless" and that it manages to leave the audience with nothing more than a "feeling of emptiness" (and no, that's not all movies "are about"), why bother to pretend it has any real value? Of course there can be "fluff" entertainment that is enjoyable. But that does not mean that anything on a screen qualifies. And it makes a mockery of any serious use of the terms to say that this film is a "personal drama," "character study," or "psychological study" of lesbian jealousy or anything else. What is on the screen here makes perfectly clear beyond any doubt that the movie does not deserve any of these obvious and unsuccessful efforts to make excuses for it.
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