{grate 2} A blonde, a gangster-pimp, ample violence and a shit load of
gold. No, not a new 50 Cent video, but director Andy Tennant’s most recent
silver-screen release, the equally bipolar “Fool’s Gold.”

The comedy-romance-action-adventure mess focuses on the
lives of a married, soon to be divorced couple — Tess (Kate Hudson) and Finn
(Matthew McConaughey). Fed up with Finn’s shenanigans, Tess opts to jump ship
and chooses to follow a more practical path (teaching) rather than treasure
hunting with her man-child hubby. But after the groundbreaking discovery of a
rather sad-looking plate, Tess is convinced she’s found a trail to the jackpot,
and decides to join her ex-husband in the hunt for the loot. They team up with
Hannah Montana look-alike Gemma Honeycutt (Alexis Dziena) and rich,
ancient-by-comparison Nigel Honeycutt (Donald Sutherland) to form their expert
gold-hunting team. Also hot on the path of the lost booty, pimp-daddy BiggBunny
(Kevin Hart) and thug sidekicks Cordell (Malcolm Jamal-Warner armed with his best
fake-Jamaican accent) and Curtis (Brian Hooks) attempt to outwit there
Anglo-Saxon opponents. Chock one up for the race wars: it’s literally Team
White versus Team Black.

After box office dud “Anaconda: The Hunt For the Blood
Orchid,” writers John Claflin and Daniel Zielman’s strives to deliver
sympathetic laughter and more blows to the head in under two hours than “Star
Wars” amputates limbs in all six installments. Not to mention a more
three-dimensional plot than their previous horror marvel.

Any verbal comedy translates the uncomfortable on-screen
moments most people avoid even outside the theater. These comedic scenes are
inexpertly fused with odd moments between father-daughter pair Nigel and Gemma,
whose asides produce the most cringes.

Beyond the forced characterization, the lighthearted feel
established earlier is undermined by the buckets of blood pouring out by the
finale. The movie climaxes with a chaotic fight scene that abandons comedy all
together, further emphasizing the notion that the writers wrote two scripts,
put them together like pieces of two separate jigsaw puzzles and called it a
movie.

By now, we’ve seen enough topless action from McConaughey to
form the next “Boys Gone Wild” video, enough blood to film “Saw V,” enough
ditzy outbursts from Dziena to keep us from procreating anytime soon and, of
course, enough indecision to keep us wary of gold-hunting themed action
comedies for a very long time. At least until another “Pirates” movie comes
out.