Martin Short's greatest role was in THREE AMIGOS. He played a man who looked like a boy who acted like a teenager. Very fitting. But when he plays a husband/father, i.e. a typical guy in the VACATION style comedy CAPTAIN RON, it just doesn't wash...
This is one of many movies where a successful, hard-working but uptight businessman (Short) learns how to become a flake in order to be liked by his family. Which happens all the time... in fiction.
With the reluctant, almost accidental "help" of Kurt Russell, resembling ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK Snake Plissken's goofy identical brother had he had one, he's the title character who passive-aggressively pilots a dilapidated boat Short was left by his dead uncle...
Short and his family have to sail from the Caribbean to Florida in order to sell the boat for a lot of money because it once belonged to Clark Gable, or something... And the scraggly, hopeless Ron is their only hope as he basically tags along on a busman's holiday...
And during this uneven, adventure/comedy journey our heroes encounter smugglers, bad weather, and a bevy of semi-chuckle situations that keep this boat floating, but only in shallow waters...
What helps is both Mary Kay Place, as the wife/mom, and Meadow Sisto, as the daughter/sister, both wearing skimpy summer clothes and looking quite lovely.
Chartered by the 1980's zombie-yarn NIGHT OF THE COMET director Thom Ebersol, the rhythm and timing is just a tad off, which doesn't matter when it comes to a badly-timed yet semi-enjoyable, semi-comfortable, glossy-colored 1990's time-filler...
Yet the cast seems in on the joke... if this came out six years earlier, it'd make much more sense. And is Russell parodying himself, the genre, or the decade in which he finally grew up after all those years at Disney?
This is one of many movies where a successful, hard-working but uptight businessman (Short) learns how to become a flake in order to be liked by his family. Which happens all the time... in fiction.
With the reluctant, almost accidental "help" of Kurt Russell, resembling ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK Snake Plissken's goofy identical brother had he had one, he's the title character who passive-aggressively pilots a dilapidated boat Short was left by his dead uncle...
Short and his family have to sail from the Caribbean to Florida in order to sell the boat for a lot of money because it once belonged to Clark Gable, or something... And the scraggly, hopeless Ron is their only hope as he basically tags along on a busman's holiday...
And during this uneven, adventure/comedy journey our heroes encounter smugglers, bad weather, and a bevy of semi-chuckle situations that keep this boat floating, but only in shallow waters...
What helps is both Mary Kay Place, as the wife/mom, and Meadow Sisto, as the daughter/sister, both wearing skimpy summer clothes and looking quite lovely.
Chartered by the 1980's zombie-yarn NIGHT OF THE COMET director Thom Ebersol, the rhythm and timing is just a tad off, which doesn't matter when it comes to a badly-timed yet semi-enjoyable, semi-comfortable, glossy-colored 1990's time-filler...
Yet the cast seems in on the joke... if this came out six years earlier, it'd make much more sense. And is Russell parodying himself, the genre, or the decade in which he finally grew up after all those years at Disney?