Into the Blue

Fans of Jessica Alba will certainly be pleased, as the only reason in the world to see Into the Blue is to admire the bountiful amounts of eye candy. The rest of the movie alternates between being extremely boring and outrageously absurd.

Jared (Paul Walker) is a recently unemployed diving instructor, who lives on a broken down boat with his beautiful girlfriend, Sam (Jessica Alba), in the Bahamas. He desperately wants to be a treasure hunter, but doesn’t have enough money to buy the necessary equipment for such a venture. Eventually, Jared’s brother, Bryce (Scott Caan), comes down to visit along with his date Amanda (Ashley Scott), a chick whom he just picked up the previous night (presumably at the airport I guess). Bryce is a big-time lawyer in New York City, and he has recently gained possession of a beach house and boat in the Bahamas when one of his firm’s clients defaults on payment. As is apparently common practice in big city law firms, the company seizes the client’s personal property and plops the deed on Bryce’s desk. Needless to say, the filmmakers’ creative energies were not overexerted much while planning this film.

Nevertheless, the foursome take out Bryce’s new boat, and after a long and tedious underwater diving scene that is visually appealing but mind numbingly dull, they randomly stumble upon the wreckage of a plane that is filled with cocaine. While this is not quite the treasure that Jared has dreamed of, Bryce and Amanda are absolutely convinced that they should simply sell the cocaine and get rich. While everyone bickers about the drugs, Jared jumps back down into the water among the perfectly docile sharks because he just knows that there’s more treasure to be found other than cocaine! Sure enough, after a few minutes of digging in the sand and holding his breath underwater for a good 10 minutes, he finds the remains of the legendary pirate ship, the Zephyr (note: not the legendary surf/skateboard shop). Unfortunately, the local drug dealer kingpin finds out about the cocaine in the airplane wreck, but instead of simply giving the drugs to him and getting back to the Zephyr, everyone freaks out and acts like idiots for the remainder of the film.

The whole movie was thoroughly exasperating. It’s one thing to be entertained by people making inexplicably half-witted decisions, but usually I get the feeling that the filmmakers intend for the audience to laugh at the imbeciles on the screen versus giving everyone the urge to kick themselves in the face. The dialogue is absolutely vile, and the interactions among the characters were completely unrealistic. There was virtually no chemistry between Sam and Jared, so the filmmakers’ brilliant method for attempting to create it is to have them kiss each other incessantly. Which is just more annoying than anything else. At least by this point in the film I wasn’t so painfully bored to the point of near hypnosis, although my brain cells started writhing in agony at the sight of the heretofore “docile” sharks suddenly deciding to feast on the bad guys--but only the bad guys. You see, sharks are apparently much smarter than humans, because they had the sense to try and eat those involved with this movie.

I only recommend Into the Blue to those interested in watching copious footage of Jessica Alba frolicking around in her bikini. Quite literally, that’s all you’ll get from this film, although the end credits proudly exclaim that there is $6 million in buried treasure just waiting to be unearthed at the bottom of the world’s seas. So, you know, better start looking.