Boat Trip

'Boat Trip' — dead in water

The short review of "Boat Trip": Don't take it.

Drop an anvil out an airplane at 23,000 feet and you have the approximate trajectory of onetime Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr.'s career now that he has made "Boat Trip." You thought it was weird when Cuba showed up in "Snow Dogs?"

"Snow Dogs" was "Dr. Zhivago" compared to "Boat Trip."

This is a movie that starts out with Gooding throwing up on his girlfriend (Vivica A. Fox) as he proposes marriage to her. And that's one of the more sophisticated bits.

"Boat Trip" is about two straight guys (Gooding and "Saturday Night Live" chunk boy Horatio Sanz) who get booked on a cruise ship that's exclusively for gay people, which isn't necessarily a bad premise. But director and writer Mort Nathan turns it into a nonstop parade of gay stereotypes and raunchy sex jokes that are offensive and not funny.

Oh, sure, he stops every once in a while to marvel at how these gay people seem almost normal, but he then reverts to tittering about guys in thongs or hair rollers, or singing "I Will Survive." To up the cheap sex-joke quotient, Nathan drops a team of bikini-wearing (and baring) Swedish babes onto the boat so he can focus on bouncing breasts as well as guys in bareback jeans and leather outfits.

Somewhere in all this Roger Moore appears as a lecherous old fellow with designs on our straight characters. What, he needed the money? 007, how could you?

Comedies that look at the differences and similarities between straights and gays can be both hilarious and enlightening ("The Birdcage" being an obvious example), but "Boat Trip" is neither. Instead it manages to be insulting to both men and women, straight and gay, and its entire cast and crew should be ashamed.

Cuba Gooding Jr. achieved fame by shouting "Show me the money." Obviously he wasn't acting.

Rated R for strong sexual content, language and some drug material