Without a Paddle: Critic Reviews

Without has all the freshness of moldering Playboys stashed under a mattress, but it evokes what few boys-will-be-boys larks can: chumminess.

The homosexual panic instilled by Deliverance fuels the running joke driving the uneasy laughs evoked by this loathsome comedy.

Think Road Trip meets City Slickers. Then dial the humor down a few notches, and you're left Without a Paddle.

You can say of Without a Paddle that at least it cares enough to steal from the very best. Unfortunately, that's about all it cares about.

The cheesy, unconvincing moments centered on the characters' serious discussions of life and friendship really seem unnatural and ruin the flow of the physical comedy.

Five screenwriters, three stars, maybe two good jokes.

How do you siphon the laffs from a surefire gut-busting premise like city slickers stuck in the sticks? ... you assemble a cut-rate Three Stooges, inject tired '80s nostalgia and some moralistic goo about carpe-ing the diem.

There are a few gross-out laughs, but Without a Paddle's gang-written script doesn't know what it wants to be.

A successfully infantile new spin on Deliverance.

The movie does have funny moments, and there's a sweetness unusual in your standard stupid summer comedy.

A consistently amusing, often hilarious outing with surprising heart.

A testosterone comedy that might just as well be titled Without a Brain Cell.

You can lose money and regain it, says a character in Without a Paddle, but not so lost time. Perhaps this is a subliminal message to moviegoers.

City Slickers remade for Three Stooges fans.

Without a Paddle can proudly take its place in the pantheon of perfectly likable stupid movies.

A guy film that chicks will dig, too.

An unstable -- if mostly painless -- mix of low comedy, stabs at higher silliness, and schmaltz.

Never rises above the level of harmless video fare.

This is the kind of comedy in which the aim is to make the audience cringe.

Forget being up a raging creek without a paddle, these poor losers are lost in a wilderness that permits no comedy.

Inoffensive to a fault, Without a Paddle goes by without a memorable ripple.

Without a Paddle is so bad that it will annoy and/or bore those who have minimal standards and a high tolerance for sewage.

Charts an uncertain course between wild and mild, eventually running aground in a pile of male-bonding muck.

Despite some agreeably idiotic moments, Without a Paddle is also mostly without a rudder.

Even a paddle can't keep this movie from sinking.