Movie Review – Man Overboard (2008)

Director: Oliver Robins
Writer: Ashley Scott Meyers and Nathan Ives
Genre: Comedy

Man Overboard attempts to get you excited about boats and salesmen, but leaves room for improvement. Although it was funny for the most part and never overly obnoxious or offensive, it lacked a little bit of direction. It tipped from family friendly light comedy to slightly offensive adult only comedy. If only it were to take out a few of the offensive scenes and some of the language it could easily be rated close to PG or PG-13. If I had one recommendation it would be to edit it towards family film. The problem with the other direction is that it feels to light at times to come close to being edgy or offensive humor.

The directing, although nothing remarkable, gets the job done quite cleanly. At times the scenery seems sparse and a bit set up, but of course budget constraints are likely the culprit. The directing mainly came down to the family versus adult edgy aspect which if one direction was strongly chosen it would have been much better. It is almost like the director and writers may have been torn a little about which way to take it and in the end found themselves somewhere in between. The writing was capable and some of the lines were quite good and most importantly funny.

The cast mainly made up of TV actors was another source of the almost sitcom feel; the set seemed set up and the actors almost played into the audience applause or laughter which was actually not there. The acting was only suspect on a few occasions though, and certainly did not take away from the film. Were the film to be done by movie stars it would have been better, but not significantly.

It all boils down to the fact that it was a low budget film made by mainly TV actors and it felt like it too. The reason it did not leave a lasting impression is that it was not harsh enough to get a rise out of me and not clean enough to watch with the whole family. It felt very much like a TV show with the F word thrown in from time to time just to remind you that it was not a TV show. It was worth the watch though, and definitely funny enough to make me laugh. Good for a light afternoon comedy.

The Skinny Version

Raw Score: 589,110
Sharon Movie? No

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