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When the 2004 movie Without a Paddle came out on DVD, I picked up a copy and watched it because my brother had recommended it. Though I had some doubts going in, I actually ended up liking the movie, which was about three men on a camping and treasure-hunting trip. Now if, like Kristin, I started my own list of needless sequels, Without a Paddle: Nature’s Calling would be on it, because it falls far short of the
wildness, fun, and story depth of the first Without a Paddle movie.
Working as a nurse in a retirement home, Zach Howell (Kristopher Turner) becomes attached to a little old woman who’s on her death bed. Her dying wish is to see her granddaughter, Heather (Madison Riley), one more time before she dies, so she asks Zach to locate her. Zach is reluctant, but when he finds out that she’s the same girl that his best friend, Ben Reed (Oliver James), had a crush on in high school and
has obsessed about over the years, he agrees to head into the Oregon woods, where Heather, going by her eco-warrior name Earth Child, went in and never came out.
Zach hopes to rebuild his friendship with Ben, which has been thrown to the wayside in recent years because of Ben’s high-stress job as a lawyer, but an annoying Brit named Nigel (Rik Young) makes that difficult when he tags along, hoping to find his step-sister for a very different reason. All three men pack up and head to Oregon, totally unprepared for what awaits them—and a gang of furry, pissed-off, psycho squirrels are the least of their worries.
Though Without a Paddle: Nature’s Calling has its touching moments (briefly, near the beginning), funny moments, and crude moments (to keep the male viewers happy and startle a laugh every now and then), the whole thing is just plain blah. I wanted to laugh a lot, but the movie just isn’t funny enough, and the plot has so little substance that I could barely stay interested enough to finish it. Even the attack squirrels are more stupid and ridiculous looking than amusing.
In fact, the funniest thing about the movie didn’t even have much to do with the plot. At one point, Ben runs into a man named Hal Gore who’s been studying how squirrel poo adds to the ozone layer while grumbling about how Al Gore stole his spotlight.
So if you’re expecting another zany adventure like the first Without a Paddle movie, don’t even bother, because Without a Paddle: Nature’s Calling will most likely disappoint you.
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