March 2003
Boat Trip

Reviewed by Niija Kuykendall

Boat Trip
Distributor: Artisan Entertainment
Director: Mort Nathan
Screenwriter: Mort Nathan, William Bigelow
Producer: Brad Krevoy, Gerhard Schmidt, Frank Hubner, Sabine Muller
Cast: Cuba Gooding Jr., Horatio Sanz, Roselyn Sanchez, Vivica A. Fox, Maurice Godin, Roger Moore

   

If you ever woke up one morning with the inclination to be entertained by a film boldly filled with sexual innuendo and jokes of every sexual orientation, see the lighthearted Boat Trip. Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding Jr. has taken a slight departure from the “Jerry Maguire”s and “Men of Honor”s of his respectable and conservative film repertoire (excluding the random Snow Dogs) to play a lovesick puppy who flees on a singles vacation cruise with his tale between his legs after his girlfriend, a bitchy Vivica Fox, breaks his heart. The twist and foundation of the plot is that the singles cruise he and his best friend join is hilariously a cruise for the rainbow team, or in more politically correct terms, men who have sex with men.

Following the adventures of Jerry and his best friend Nick as they are traumatized by phallic ice sculptures and pursuing sugar daddies, one played by an aging Roger Moore (known as 007 to most of us) is pretty funny. Horatio Sanz, of “Saturday Night Live”, steals the show as Nick, with his bumbling sexual escapades and epiphanies. The best thing about the work is that it will appeal to both gay men and heterosexual men alike. While insider gay jokes abound, the men who have sex with women are thrown little crumbs of their own by Jerry’s love interest plot, made interesting by the beautiful Roselyn Sanchez of Rush Hour 2. Not to say that women don’t have a place of expression in this movie - well we don’t really, but it is fun anyway to laugh at the antics of men, heterosexual or otherwise.