Hudson deserves much better than silly ‘Fool’s Gold’

Published 12:52 pm Thursday, February 7, 2008

It’s official: Kate Hudson needs a new agent. This actress continues to be significantly better than her material, a situation that becomes glaring with “Fool’s Gold.”

The movie is one of those periodic updates on the sunken-treasure genre, much in the mold of the classic Jacqueline Bisset wet T-shirt film “The Deep” and fast in the footsteps of 2005’s similar “Into the Blue,” with Jessica Alba.

The drill is pretty standard here, with gold-seeker Matthew McConaughey and his soon-to-be-ex-wife Hudson hunting for a ship that sank in 1715 loaded with jewels. A rich dude (Donald Sutherland) with a handy yacht, traveling with his bratty daughter (Alexis Dziena), is around to help.

At first, the movie has some clever ideas: the way McConaughey and Ukrainian partner Ewen Bremner are underwater when their boat sinks, and how this leads to trouble with the rap artist/gangsta type (Kevin Hart) who’s bankrolling the search, and how this leads to McConaughey missing his divorce hearing, and … like that.

Just a second there — rap artist/gangsta type? This is one of the many wacky threads in an increasingly unbelievable scenario; for some reason this rapper and his gun-toting posse have settled in the Caribbean to hunt for the treasure.

Nothing is quite normal in this movie. Donald Sutherland speaks with a British accent, British actor Ray Winstone speaks with a Southern accent, and “Trainspotting” Scotsman Bremner is supposed to be Ukrainian. None of them is as convincing as McConaughey’s pectoral muscles.

Kate Hudson’s delivery and timing are so good, you can almost convince yourself she’s in a different, better movie when she’s talking. Then we come back to “Fool’s Gold.”

This movie isn’t a disaster. Director Andy Tennant, a director who seems to make one OK movie (“Hitch”) for each bad one (“Sweet Home Alabama”), shows signs of trying.

But in the end it’s sunk by the plot whoppers and McConaughey’s one-note personality. He co-starred with Hudson in “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” but they still don’t have much rapport. Maybe with this much skin showing, they don’t need it.