My best friends and I watched this in high school, although we live in different places in the country now we still refer to the movie all the time and when we can get together, it's just like the movie in the way we are catching up, doing stupid stuff, and laughing. Love this movie!

Dax Shepherd is clearly the cream of the crap in this overlong rafting misadventure. The story is weak, and you've seen it all before. Plenty of sophomoric jokes, along with a story stretched to the maximum. Burt Reynolds appears embarrassed with such trite material, and the two backwoods idiots have way too much redundant screen time. Throwing in a message about responsibility, comes across as totally out of place considering how silly everything gets. The D.B. Cooper connection is tenuous at best. If watching stupidity on parade is your idea of entertainment, then "Without a Paddle" should be on your list of must see movies. Others beware. - MERK

As children they were the best of friends so when Billy passes away a decade or so later, friends Dan, Jerry and Tom come together to attend his funeral. In doing so they revisit the tree house of their childhood and discover that Billy had added to the childhood plan of tracking the urban myth of DB Cooper and his stolen loot lost in the woods. Realising that Billy must have tracked it down for real, the trio set out on a treasure hunt down river partly to get paid and partly as a tribute to their dead friend. However things go seriously wrong very quickly.A very basic comedy this one that is a fairly obvious affair that will not avoid taking an easy short cut when it can. This is clear from the start where we see the death of a young man turned into a plot device to get the rest on a treasure hunt. From here on in the humour comes from events that you would mostly pluck out of the air as happening if you imagined how the scenario would play out – chased by hillbillies, chased by a bear, learning valuable life lessons and so on. The total package is as basic as this makes it sound but it just enough has enough to make it watchable if totally forgettable.It isn't ever really funny but it is amusing if you are in the mood in the way that crappy sitcoms will hit the spot if you are tired and just looking for a rest for your brain. The casting matches the approach of the writers as none of the cast are that good. In fairness this type of film suits Lillard, Shepard and Green because they all are able to turn in basic characters without much effort or subtlety. They work well off one another though despite everything. Suplee is a nice find in a slightly meaner version of his My Name is Earl character but Reynolds is a valueless cameo.Overall then an amusing but mostly basic comedy that will offers little more than the obvious and predictable in every regard.

When I first saw the television ads for this movie, I thought it looked like another of the countless dumb comedies Hollywood seems to crank out these days. I certainly had no intention of paying to see it in the theater, and really had no inclination to even rent the DVD when it came out. So it wasn't until it showed up on HBO, and there was absolutely nothing else on, that I half-heartedly decided to give it a look. Imagine my surprise when I found out how genuinely funny it really is! Not only funny, but a comedy with a real heart, some incredible scenery, and a good storyline to boot. Just about everyone in it was perfectly cast, and you could really believe that the three main characters had been friends since childhood. I found the idea of three boyhood friends searching for the treasure of D.B. Cooper as adults quite intriguing, and well played out in the film. And Burt Reynolds was a hoot as the enigmatic "mountain man". I have since watched "Without A Paddle" several times, and even bought the DVD. The DVD cast commentary is quite funny, and you can tell they had a great time making the movie. All in all, a very funny movie - probably one of my favorite comedies of the past couple of years. Give it a look, if you haven't already. You might be pleasantly surprised.