Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

generationofswine It is far from a bad film...unless you are the kind of person that just can't stand a fun, pulp adventure story.Basically all this movie is is a pulp novel turned into a movie.Had it been made in the Golden Age of Hollywood right up to the 1980s it would have been a hit. Had it been made in the 1990s it would have been a modest success...But it was made in 2008 and the tastes of the world had changed. 9-11 had come and gone and people lost that childlike innocence that is needed to enjoy films like this. The Computer Age dawned and everyone wanted nothing but over-the-top special effects.So fun adventures were shoved to the side and the critics--that still claim to love fun adventures like Captain Blood--turned their noses up at anyone that even hinted towards enjoying them.What you have is a treasure standing in for the MacGuffin, a roguish hero, a little bit of a love triangle, and the open seas.It is classic Hollywood. It is also, unfortunately, they kind of movie we need today and the kind that Hollywood is most reluctant to make.

Paul Magne Haakonsen While "Fool's Gold" is predictable to the point where even a blind can see what's coming, it still proves to be quite entertaining. It is the type of movie that you can't help to enjoy, sort of like a brushed up take on a movie such as "Romancing the Stone".There is a good flow to the story and it worked out quite nicely. The movie picks up speed right from the very start and keep on sprinting in that high speed to the very end. And while on the topic of the story, then it is only fair to say that the storyline is fun, good and fast paced.The movie was also quite nicely cast, and there is a great chemistry between Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey. But Donald Sutherland also did add a great, unique touch to the movie, just a shame that he didn't have more time on the screen than he did."Fool's Gold" is the type of movie that you can watch more than just once, despite being so predictable.

James Hitchcock Like "Underwater" from the fifties and "The Deep" from the seventies, "Fool's Gold" is a film about diving for lost treasure in the Caribbean. At least, it's supposed to be the Caribbean, although most of the shooting actually took place (for climatic rather than financial reasons) in Australia. One detail apparently borrowed from "The Deep" is that the heroes are searching for the "dowry" of King Philip V of Spain, supposedly lost off the Bahamas in 1715. (Actually, a "dowry" is a payment made by the bride's family to the groom, not vice versa).The film also combines elements of a genre which was popular in the thirties and forties and which has occasionally been revived in recent years, the "comedy of remarriage". The main characters are Benjamin "Finn" Finnegan, a professional treasure hunter, and his ex-wife, Tess. The two are thrown together by chance during Finn's search for the wrecked Spanish galleon "Aurelia"; Tess is working as a steward on a yacht owned by Finn's millionaire patron Nigel Honeycutt. And, of course, they find their love for one another being rekindled in the course of the action. This being a thriller as well as a romance, there have to be other people in search of the treasure, and these include a local gangster named Bigg Bunny. (Not, I would have thought, the most frightening alias that a ruthless villain could have chosen). Another detail borrowed from "The Deep" is that the heroes are all white whereas the villains are mostly black. When I re-watched "The Deep" recently I assumed that this sort of thing was just an example of 1970s political incorrectness, but it seems that you can still get away with it in the 21st century.The critics' comments ranged from "an indifferent mess" to "a cheesy, familiar bore" via "excruciatingly lame" and "stupid, slack and sexless". Male critics in particular seemed to object to the fact that Matthew McConaughey spends much of the running-time shirtless and bare- chested. Kate Hudson even ended up with a "Worst Actress" Razzie nomination. And yet I was unable to join in this near-unanimous chorus of disapproval; not for the first time I found myself warming to a film which the critics generally hated. Yes, there are things wrong with it. Hudson will never have quite the same charisma as her famous mother Goldie Hawn. The cliff-hanging (or should that be plane-hanging) finale was a direct plagiarism from at least two Bond movies, except that in the Bond movies it was done better. Donald Sutherland tends to overact and plays Honeycutt with the sort of fruity upper-class British accent that the British upper classes generally abandoned circa 1960. (The Canadian Sutherland was presumably cast on the basis of the common American view that, as Canada is still part of the Queen's dominions, all Canadians must therefore speak the Queen's English with a British accent). I felt, however, that the critics who disparaged the film so much were taking it too seriously. It is not a comedy in the sense of a film which regales us with one hilarious joke after another, but it is generally light-hearted and does not take itself too seriously. (In this it is very different to "The Deep", which took itself far too seriously). The photography of the tropical scenery is attractive- another way in which it scores over "The Deep", where the scenes shot on land seemed just as dull and murky as those shot deep under the ocean. McConaughey and Hudson were never going to win any Oscars, but they make an likable couple, and there is an amusing contribution from Alexis Dziena as Honeycutt's airheaded daughter Gemma. There is nothing deep and significant about this film, but why should there be? There is, after all, a place in the cinema for films which simply seek to entertain rather than to make a profound statement about life, and entertaining is something which "Fool's Gold" does rather well. 6/10

Neil Welch Bickering divorced treasure-hunting couple Finn (Matthew McConaughey) and Tess (Kate Hudson) continue pursuing their previously abandoned attempt to find sunken treasure with the help of millionaire Nigel Hunnicutt (Donald Sutherland) and his idiot daughter Gemma (Alexis Dziena), despite the fact that Moe Fitch (Ray Winstone) and Bigg Bunny (Kevin Hart) have their own thoughts on the matter.The comedy here isn't that funny (although I did find airhead Gemma amusing), and the bickering between Finn and Tess wears out its welcome quickly. And Donald Sutherland's English accent convinces as much as Ray Winstone's American one ie. not at all.But the story is OK, the scenery is attractive, there is minimal swearing - in short, this is an adequate if undemanding way to spend a couple of hours.