Without a Paddle
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| Without a Paddle | |
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 Without a Paddle film poster |
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| Directed by | Steven Brill |
| Produced by | Donald DeLine |
| Written by | Fred Wolf Harris Goldberg Tom Nursall Jay Leggett Mitch Rouse |
| Starring | Matthew Lillard Seth Green Dax Shepard Burt Reynolds Ethan Suplee |
| Music by | Christophe Beck |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 20 August 2004 |
| Running time | 98 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | ~ US$19,000,000 |
| IMDb profile | |
Without a Paddle is a 2004 film about three men going on a camping trip. The movie stars Matthew Lillard, Seth Green and Dax Shepard. The film is somewhat a parody of adventure films like Deliverance — indeed, one of the stars of Deliverance, Burt Reynolds, makes an appearance in the film, and the plotlines are similar.
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[edit] Plot
After their close friend, Billy, passes away, Tom (Dax Shepard), Jerry (Matthew Lillard) and Dan (Seth Green) decide to go on a treasure hunt. After the funeral they find a map, apparently put into a time capsule by Billy, supposedly leading to the remnants of D.B. Cooper's missing treasure. Although Dan expresses extreme distaste for Jerry's idea, the three friends decide to drop their responsibilities and go find the treasure, completing Billy's legacy.
After a long drive to a remote part of Oregon, they rent a canoe and head down Spirit River. On their first night of camping, the trio is attacked by a bear that ruins most of their equipment and supplies. After running away from the bear, they climb a tree where they sleep the rest of the night. In the morning, they are awakened by hillbillies illegally fishing with explosives and their bear 'friend' is scared away. Jerry and Tom decide that the worst is behind them and they should continue looking for the treasure; Dan argues that he was right in the first place and that they never should have come. The friends embark down the river but miss the fork they were supposed to take because the bear slashed through some of the map. The trio paddles down the river until the rapids become too rough to manage. Everyone falls out of the canoe and manages to get back inside once the water calms. Although they thought everything was going to be OK after that, a large waterfall looms right in front of them. Once again, they abandon ship and hit the water below; the canoe snaps from the impact and pieces can be seen floating afterward.
They decide to go home but have no idea of how to get there. The group of friends finally finds some hope when they hear music playing. When they reach the music, they find the same hillbillies that they saw earlier that day. The guns and the previous actions of the rednecks make them decide to hide in the barn before they are seen. Unfortunately, the guard dogs, Lynyrd and Skynyrd, find them and the hillbillies, Dennis (Abraham Benrubi) and Elwood (Ethan Suplee) follow them. Tom realizes they are marijuana farmers of a vast marijuana farm because the barn has marijuana everywhere. Dan tells them they are not looking for any trouble and that they don’t care about the marijuana. Dennis and Elwood shoot at them and the friends break out of the back of the barn. After breaking out, they run through the marijuana field, accidentally setting off the security flares. The flares set the whole field on fire, which causes them to get high while running away. The two angry farmers try to kill them before they can get away. Tom, Dan, and Jerry have to use their brains to escape the angry marijuana farmers while trying to get out of the forest and go home. The trio also come across two beautiful tree-huggers in a gigantic redwood called 'Earth Child', and claim they're there to prevent it being cut down. The tree-huggers, Flower (Rachel Blanchard) and Butterfly (Christina Moore), feed and take care of the trio. They use the radio to call someone to rescue them. The friends think they are going to be rescued, but just got off the radio with Dennis. Dennis and Elwood proceed to find the tree and try to kill them. Jerry thinks of a plan to get out, Tom executes it, and Butterfly and Flower throw paper bags full of feces at the hillbillies to prevent them from shooting. They escape again, this time they were without their clothes besides their underwear. Trying to outrun the hillbillies, they walk up the mountain until Dan can’t take it anymore. They spend the night cuddled up together under a ledge to keep warm.
A man (Burt Reynolds) finds them there and leads them to his cabin. The friends are scared that he is going to do something to them, but he turns out to be very hospitable. He lets them have some of his clothes and keeps them warm with a fire and blankets. They think he is D.B. Cooper, but he tells them he is actually Del Knox, D.B.’s partner. He tells them that D.B. came down in a parachute in the night and he was supposed to signal Del with a flashlight. He never found D.B. because it was winter and there was a snowstorm. Just when they were starting to feel comfortable, Dennis and Elwood show up again. Del comes out with two pistols and shoots their 4-wheeler, making it explode, and Dennis and Elwood run away.
The trio sets out for home but finds iron ore in the hills, which causes the compass to be off true north. They fall into an old mineshaft where D.B. Cooper’s skeletal remains lie. On finding no sign of the money, the men think that someone already beat them to it, but then they discover charred pieces of banknotes near a long burnt-out campfire; they figue out D.B. burned some of his own loot just to keep warm and stay alive a little while longer during the freezing snowstorm before he finally succumbed to exposure. This makes the men realize that life is a very valuable thing and it shouldn’t be wasted. Dan escapes by crawling through a small shaft because he is the only one small enough to get out. Dennis and Elwood show up again and are going to kill Jerry and Tom. In a moment of excellence, Dan hits Dennis and Elwood with a log and they fall into the shaft, dropping their guns and a grenade at the top. A fight breaks out between the men in the shaft and Sheriff Briggs (Ray Baker) shows up. Dan is glad to see the sheriff, but learns Dennis and Elwood work for the corrupt lawman – who is the boss of the marijuana farm. Finally, everyone escapes the shaft and the friends are going to be shot. Before Sheriff Briggs, Dennis and Elwood can shoot the other trio, Jerry pulls out Elwood’s grenade that he dropped when Dan hit him. Jerry throws the grenade, which explodes and causes a tree to fall over on top of the villains; trapping them.
All three antagonists are arrested and Tom, Dan, and Jerry are town heroes. Del shows up and gives them his share of the money he found by D.B.’s remains that the friends overlooked. Del also leaves to go "see the world", because he's finally decided to stop waiting in his cabin. In the end, each man gets his life back on track.
[edit] Cast
(in order of appearance)
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[edit] Trivia
- Although the film was set in Oregon, USA it was filmed entirely in New Zealand.
- Dax Shepard (Tom) says he is not an astronaut, he's an American. In his next film, Zathura, he played the astronaut. Tom lied and said he was employee of the month at the monsoon lagoon in Raging Waters. His next film after Zathura is called Employee of the Month
- During the marijuana field scene, a man can be seen crawling amongst the weed. This was not a cast member, but a studio worker.
- Even though the two girls say they do not shave, and hence have hairy legs, when they raise their arms there is clearly no armpit hair. It could be possible the girls use an organic depilatory, but that would not explain why they do not use it on their legs as well.
- Abraham Benrubi's character of Dennis comments "the hills have gone gay" when Boy George's song Do You Really Want to Hurt Me reverberates through the mountains. Benrubi played Roy Biggins Junior, a homosexual, on the NBC sitcom Wings
- The man at the beginning of the film who takes Dan's parking space was originally going to be played by Jon Lovitz.
