Jerry and Nick are two close friends whose love lives have hit rock bottom. Jerry's girlfriend Felicia has turned down his marriage proposal after vomiting all over her during a hot air balloon ride during the proposal. After Nick runs into a friend who is marrying a beautiful, younger girl he met on a singles cruise, he decides to take a similar cruise with Jerry. While on their way to the travel agency, they get into a verbal altercation with a gay man who works at the agency they plan to book the cruise through. The manager attempts to patch things up by handling their booking personally. To Jerry and Nick, the situation appears to be handled well and they leave, not expecting anything to go wrong. After they leave, it is revealed that the agent and manager, both men, are actually gay lovers, and that they have been booked on a cruise for gay men. During their trip, they come to learn that gay men are less objectionable than they first assumed. However, Jerry falls in love with the cruise's dance instructor Gabriella and in order to win her over, he pretends to be gay so he can get closer to her. Meanwhile, Nick blossoms a romance with a bikini model named Inga. After an accidental affair with her mean, sex-obsessed coach Sonya, Nick must fend her off, after she has fallen in love with him as well. In the end, Jerry wins Gabriella while Nick loses out on Inga but sees a potential relationship with her sister instead. However, he is then unwittingly reunited with Sonya; much to his disgust and her instant arousal upon seeing him.
Boat Trip was released in the UK on October 4, 2002, and in the US and Canada on March 21, 2003, where the film opened at #10 and grossed $3,815,075 in 1715 theatres. In total, it had a worldwide gross of $15,020,293. It was released on DVD in the US on September 30, 2003.
Critical response
This film was universally critically panned by the critics on its initial release and performed poorly in theatres. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 7% based on reviews from 89 critics, with an average rating of 2.55/10. The site's consensus reads: "Boat Trip is a lame, juvenile farce that's heavy on stereotypes and desperate antics but short on brains and laughs." On Metacritic it has a score of 18 out of 100 based on 28 reviews, indicating overwhelming dislike by critics. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times panned the film and wrote: "This is a movie made for nobody, about nothing." He continued: "Not that the film is outrageous. That would be asking too much. It is dim-witted, unfunny, too shallow to be offensive." Ebert included it at #3 on his list of the 10 Worst films of 2003. Variety called it a "Washout. Lacking the mojo even to be offensive". Many viewed the film as homophobic although a reviewer for The Advocate wrote that the film was too terrible to protest. On the showEbert and Roeper, Roger Ebert said the film "was so bad in so many different ways, not only does it offend gays, it offends everyone else." His co-host Richard Roeper said, "If the ship hit an iceberg, I would have been rooting for the iceberg." Chris Rock mentioned Gooding during the 2005 Oscars telecast for starring in this movie after receiving an Academy Award, joking that Gooding must have had serious financial problems to need star in such a bad film.
Accolades
The film was nominated for two Razzie Awards for Gooding as Worst Actor and for Mort Nathan as Worst Director, but "lost" both awards to Gigli. At the 2003 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, the film received five nominations: Worst Picture, Worst Actor for Gooding, Worst Supporting Actor for Moore, Most Painfully Unfunny Comedy, and Worst On-Screen Couple for Gooding and anyone forced to co-star with him. Its only win was for Most Painfully Unfunny Comedy.
