Michael Douglas has just been released from a mental hospital. During his years as an inmate, he read a great deal about California history, especially the stories left by monks of lost treasure. One monk in particular, left behind a diary of his journey in 1651 in which he lists clues of the treasure's whereabouts. Douglas returns home and enlists the aid of his estranged daughter, Evan Rachel Wood, in his besotted quest. She supports them with her job at McDonalds. They pawn or sell everything except their house in order to buy the equipment necessary to track down the lost doubloons -- back hoes, scuba equipment, and so forth.
It's a gentle family comedy, not a zany laff riot. There are no pratfalls, little vulgarity, and nothing raunchy or violent. The model of madness is fey and whimsical. There's nothing dangerous about the deranged Douglas. He's funny.
And it's Douglas's kind of role too. He's superb at wild-eyed restraint. At one point he's about to drive away in Wood's heap of a car and she rushes out to stop him. She shines a flashlight through the window and when he explains the purpose of his midnight trip his eyes are so wide open that the irises are surrounded by white, as in a cartoon. I looked in the mirror and tried to do it myself and couldn't.
Wood is less effective. She looks and sounds as if she'd just been extraordinarily renditioned from the streets of Sherman Oaks. She was stunning as an early adolescent in "Thirteen," where she embodied a sort of savage innocence, whereas here she's a generically beautiful young woman.
The script depends a lot on the performances because there really isn't much to the story except air. One mildly amusing incident follows another, and they'd all be pointless if they weren't built around Douglas's obsession with the monk's leavings.
The dialog is warm and funny without the willingness to crack the viewer up with laughter. Everyone seems so charming and good natured. Here's an example of one of the more ludic lines.
Wood: (Shouting) "You think the world is only here for your own amusement!" Douglas: (Shrugs) "Look at the world." Now, an exchange like this must necessarily make a great big thud unless it's carried off perfectly, with neither party acting as if they realized its absurdity. And they do it.
There was one sad underlying impression that I'm not sure the writers/director meant to elicit. I mean the striking contrast between the landscape descriptions from the monk's diary. They're all about pure valleys and unspoiled heaving hills and rivers and caves and rocks. The landscape that Douglas and Wood explore is mottled with housing tracts and strip malls. These developments seem to have been caught in mid flight, while spreading like some malignancy across the natural features of the land. Douglas needs to break into CostCo and drill through several feet of concrete to find the monk's river, now driven underground, hidden under a multitude of shelves with boxes of consumer crap. There's nothing especially funny about purity lost.
It's a gentle family comedy, not a zany laff riot. There are no pratfalls, little vulgarity, and nothing raunchy or violent. The model of madness is fey and whimsical. There's nothing dangerous about the deranged Douglas. He's funny.
And it's Douglas's kind of role too. He's superb at wild-eyed restraint. At one point he's about to drive away in Wood's heap of a car and she rushes out to stop him. She shines a flashlight through the window and when he explains the purpose of his midnight trip his eyes are so wide open that the irises are surrounded by white, as in a cartoon. I looked in the mirror and tried to do it myself and couldn't.
Wood is less effective. She looks and sounds as if she'd just been extraordinarily renditioned from the streets of Sherman Oaks. She was stunning as an early adolescent in "Thirteen," where she embodied a sort of savage innocence, whereas here she's a generically beautiful young woman.
The script depends a lot on the performances because there really isn't much to the story except air. One mildly amusing incident follows another, and they'd all be pointless if they weren't built around Douglas's obsession with the monk's leavings.
The dialog is warm and funny without the willingness to crack the viewer up with laughter. Everyone seems so charming and good natured. Here's an example of one of the more ludic lines.
Wood: (Shouting) "You think the world is only here for your own amusement!" Douglas: (Shrugs) "Look at the world." Now, an exchange like this must necessarily make a great big thud unless it's carried off perfectly, with neither party acting as if they realized its absurdity. And they do it.
There was one sad underlying impression that I'm not sure the writers/director meant to elicit. I mean the striking contrast between the landscape descriptions from the monk's diary. They're all about pure valleys and unspoiled heaving hills and rivers and caves and rocks. The landscape that Douglas and Wood explore is mottled with housing tracts and strip malls. These developments seem to have been caught in mid flight, while spreading like some malignancy across the natural features of the land. Douglas needs to break into CostCo and drill through several feet of concrete to find the monk's river, now driven underground, hidden under a multitude of shelves with boxes of consumer crap. There's nothing especially funny about purity lost.