DVD reviews: Fool's Gold | Cashback

Published on Saturday 30 August 2008 14:32

FOOL'S GOLD (12) £19.99 Director: Andy Tennant Running time: 98 minutes *

It's a comedy caper in which we get to see Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson wearing very little, very often on the beach. What's not to like, you say? Everything, as it happens.

McConaughey is Ben, an affable and unbelievably annoying treasure hunter – but a modern one rather than the type with a peg leg, an eye-patch and a parrot – who is looking for the 18th-century Queen's Dowry. This is basically a whole load of treasure chests full of cheap-looking tat that wouldn't sell in a charity shop.

Hudson is Ben's put-upon wife – well you would be, married to him – and they're on the brink of divorce, which poses the question: why don't they just get on with it and then the film would be over a whole lot quicker? Basically, Ben values treasure over his marriage, and watching this drivel we learn to value everything over either of them.

Anyway, the carping and bronzed duo set off to look for the 40 chests, as do a motley crew of uninteresting and two-dimensional gangster stereotypes. These include Ray Winstone – who is forever skulking around on the make in this nasty breed of film – and local gangster Bigg Bunny, who sounds about as scary as a fluffy rabbit. The most frightening thing of all, however, is the cacophony of bad accents. Winstone's is Deep South, Ewan Bremner's is Ukrainian (though this is a wild guess), and Donald Sutherland's is British. This film should, like so much tacky treasure, be buried deep in the ground, never to be seen or spoken of again.

CASHBACK (18) 15.99

Director: Sean Ellis

Running time: 98 minutes

*

Really, Sean Biggerstaff deserves so much better than this offensive twaddle. The Harry Potter Scot (he played Gryffindor Quidditch captain Oliver Wood and has since become one of those teen heartthrobs in a cape) is a good actor and makes the best here of the poorly drawn and totally unsympathetic character of Ben, a romantic art student who takes a night job at a London branch of Sainsbury's and daydreams about beautiful women. He's nursing a broken heart (a slowed-down shot of his girlfriend, played by Michelle Ryan, screaming at him opens the film), but that's no excuse for his appalling mooning and leching, all enacted under the shallow ruse of 'art'.

This very bad British flick is directed and written by fashion photographer Sean Ellis, and it's insidious, misogynistic stuff. The whole exercise is ultimately an excuse to show countless shots of naked women, thanks to Ben's ability to freeze time so he can ogle all the poor unfortunate gals who make the mistake of doing their weekly shop in this particular supermarket. The women are nameless, characterless and flawless, solely existing as objects of male desire, robbed of their clothes and dignity.

All this softcore drivel aside, it's a film that deals in clichs and the script is woefully stagnant. Ellis's film started out as an Oscar-nominated short, which was then turned into a feature, and padding it out has done it no favours whatsoever. When Ben eventually falls for a real, living girl – played by Emilia Fox – I just wanted her to sock it to him with a bag of frozen peas. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out so well.