Club Paradise

A slapdash, mostly unfunny disaster, Club Paradise follows Chicago fireman Jack Moniker (Robin Williams) as he decides to retire and move to a tropical island – where he buys and opens a Club Med-style resort. It’s a fairly appealing premise that’s employed to terminally underwhelming effect by Harold Ramis, as the filmmaker, working from a script written with Brian Doyle-Murray, delivers an erratically-paced narrative that’s compounded by a thoroughly hit-and-miss structure and a proliferation of over-the-top, far-from-hilarious jokes and gags. (It doesn’t help, certainly, that the appealing cast mugs and overacts through virtually the entirety of the proceedings, with Williams, who often seems to be just doing his act, especially guilty of this.) The movie’s hands-off atmosphere is certainly not helped by an ongoing subplot involving an evil land developer and a corrupt politician, with the complete and total ineffectiveness of this portion of the story paving the way for a hopelessly anticlimactic (and somewhat endless) final stretch. Club Paradise’s failure is ultimately made all-the-more depressing by the degree to which a talented roster of performers is squandered, as the film boasts appearances by such notable comedy figures as Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, and Andrea Martin – although all the talent in the world can’t revive a seriously anemic screenplay.

*1/2 out of ****

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