By Geno McGahee
I am a big fan of Kurt Russell and I think that although he has done many popular flicks that made it to the big screen, he never made it to the action star status that he deserved. Russell had some great movies like BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, EXECUTIVE DECISION, BREAKDOWN, THE THING and showed his diversity with comedic work like OVERBOARD. That movie worked. The 1992 effort “CAPTAIN RON” proved to be a painful watch and that is upsetting for more than one reason. One, Kurt and I are two of the most popular people ever born in Springfield, Massachusetts, making us basically brothers, and two, this film had to kick his career in the balls.
Martin Short is the co-star of this film and his work has been hit or miss. At times, he can be very effective as he was in THREE FUGITIVES and THREE AMIGOS…maybe if this was called “THREE CAPTAIN RONS”, he would have ruled, but his missed the mark. Martin Harvey (Short) works in a big office building and it’s not the life he wants. He gets a message that his uncle left him a sailboat that is worth 250,000 bucks and the world turns around for him. He goes home and tries to nail his wife, Katherine (Mary Kay Place), while she was on the phone. That phone had the longest cord in the world, but this was 1992 and that was the best technology they had.
Martin convinces his wife to sail the boat to Florida where they can sell it. It’ll be a long trip, but it’ll be an adventure. She agrees and packs up the two kids, the young son, Ben (Benjamin Salisbury) and 16-year-old daughter, Caroline (Meadow Sisto). Needing a captain for the ship, they find Captain Ron (Russell), a beach bum that hangs out in his speedos a little too much. I’m sorry. Dudes in speedos…come on man.
The tension builds between Martin and Captain Ron, as the Captain starts getting pretty close to Katherine…at one time standing behind her, helping her steer the boat, in speedos. Everything that can go wrong, does go wrong, as the family begins to find the unity and adventure that they had hoped for. They deal with pirates, the authorities, and much more, and Captain Ron begins finding a place in the Harvey family that doesn’t involve him nailing Martin’s wife.
As good as Kurt Russell can be, this character did not work. In his defense, he didn’t have a lot to work with. The screenplay was terrible…so terrible that the writer, John Dwyer, never wrote another story. The only thing he may have written was an apology letter to the cast. Realistically, the cast did their best to make this work, but there wasn’t any comedic value and the adventure side of it wasn’t anything special or new.
CAPTAIN RON sucks. I wanted to like it. The elements were there to make a good movie, but without a good screenplay, it didn’t have a chance.
Rating: 3/10
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