True story ‘Adrift’ lives up to its title
IF YOU must see one sailboatin-danger movie this year, make it “All Is Lost.” It came out in 2013 and is available on various streaming services.
Unfortunately, the one in theatres is “Adrift,” which is based on a true story that is probably not actually as stupid as the movie is.
Tami (Shailene Woodley) is a free spirit, the kind who engages in the type of white-girl tourism that involves smoking weed and charmingly shrugging at immigration officials who ask how long you plan on being in the country and how you plan on making money while there. In Tahiti, she meets Richard (Sam Claflin), a similar wanderer who is also an expert sailor.
When a couple hire him to sail their boat from Tahiti to San Diego, Richard and Tami set off to make the journey. Things ... do not go well. Like, even worse than one might expect if one were trapped on a boat for weeks and weeks with just one other person.
After they sail into a hurricane (oops), Tami regains consciousness only to find the boat’s mast broken and its sail in the water, which is very much not where a sail is supposed to be. Now she and Richard must figure out how to get to land. Instead of San Diego, they elect to make for Hawaii – which is closer but much harder to locate – without dying in any one of a number of ways.
So! Good story! Why, then, is “Adrift” so stupid?
First, we have to ask ourselves what makes a movie stupid. Cinematic stupidity must contain at least two of three elements: an underwritten plot, underwritten characters and underwritten dialogue.
Writers David Branson Smith and Aaron and Jordan Kandell try their best with the story, but “people on boat” isn’t inherently interesting. They try to solve it by leaping back and forth in time between Tami and Richard falling in love and the boat saga, which is a good idea because neither storyline is interesting enough to hold an audience’s attention on its own. Woodley and Claflin do what they can with their performances, but “people who travel” aren’t necessarily interesting, either. And then, oh, the dialogue.
If you wanted to play Dialogue Bingo, the squares would be easy to write. There is “I’ve never met anyone like you,” “You can do anything you put your mind to,” “I sailed halfway around the world to find you” and “Oh, God, he’s burning up” (referring to a fever, not an actual conflagration).
There is also “I wouldn’t trade this for anything,” which makes one question Tami’s sanity, as she is on a boat with no power, little food and water, and a very high chance of dying. There is also an “I can’t even right now,” which is quite the anachronism, since the story takes place in 1983.
Is “Adrift” bad? Yes. But plenty of bad movies are not stupid (“Justice League”), and some movies are so stupid they move into the realm of enjoyable camp (“Center Stage”). “Adrift” is stupid because it thinks it’s a good movie. There is a story there (see: “All Is Lost” and see “All Is Lost”), but the telling of “Adrift” aims for the stars, only to belly-flop into the water.