cult film freak: KURT RUSSELL, MARTIN SHORT & MEADOW SISTO SAIL 'CAPTAIN RON'

Kurt Russell, Martin Short and the beautiful Meadow Sisto in CAPTAIN RON Year: 1992

Martin Short's greatest role was in THREE AMIGOS as a man who looked like a boy who acted like a teenager. But when he plays a husband/father, i.e. a typical guy in the VACATION style comedy CAPTAIN RON, it doesn't completely wash; and is one of many movies where a successful, hard-working yet uptight businessman learns how to become a flake in order to be liked by his family. Which happens all the time, on screen...

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: And of course, the scraggly yet endearingly hopeless Ron is their only hope as he basically tags along on a busman's holiday around Caribbean-like islands...

Meadow Sisto as Caroline Harvey hotly walks the deck in CAPTAIN RON which Rates: ***

During this uneven adventure/comedy our heroes encounter smugglers, guerillas, 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. Like mother/daughter Karen Austin and Kerri Green in SUMMER RENTAL, Mary Kay and Meadow compliment each other perfectly. Both are the kind of personal pretty you eventually fall head-over-heels for.

Chartered by the 1980's zombie-yarn NIGHT OF THE COMET director Thom Ebersol, the rhythm and timing is a tad off, which doesn't matter when it comes to a semi-enjoyable, semi-comfortable, glossy-neon 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 previous decade in which he finally grew up after all those years at Disney?