Boat Trip

Cuba “Show Me the Money” Gooding Jr. follows up his shameless mugging in Snow Dogs with another thick slice of thespian ham. He and his best buddy (Horatio Sanz), both flaming heterosexuals, offend a travel agent who subsequently books the two single vacationers on a gay Love Boat. The fish-out-of-water premise plays alternately like a wannabe social comedy (a few of the gay characters have a semblance of realism) and a cartoon (with Gooding and Sanz bouncing in and out of wide-eyed panic), and the two never find a common ground. Gooding pretends to be gay to get close to an attractive female dance instructor (Roselyn Sanchez, who practices fellatio on a banana). Sanz begins to think he actually may be gay. And Roger Moore pops up for a few redeemable serio-comic comments on the stereotyping of sexual preferences. Like a bad TV sitcom, the cruise ship plucks a stranded Swedish sun-tanning team from the ocean to comply with Hollywood’s current unofficial cleavage quotient.