RATING: D

Starring: Paul Walker, Jessica Alba, Scott Caan, Ashley Lynn Scott, Josh Brolin, James Frain, Tyson Beckford. Music by Paul Haslinger, Co-Producer Rick Dellago, Executive Producers Peter Gruber, Louise G. Friedman, Ori Marmur, Matt Luber, Produced by David A. Zelon, Written by Matt Johnson, Directed by John Stockwell.

Rated PG-13, Running Time 110 mins., 2.39 to 1 Anamorphic Aspect Ratio.

After the blockbusting summer movie season, the lame and embarrassing productions usually arrive – movies that normally wouldn’t survive the “heat” from studio tent pole pictures. “Into The Blue” the latest of this class of feature may have began as a screenplay discovered on the ocean floor, since that’s where much of the story takes place. Shot before the horrendous but surprisingly successful “Fantastic Four”, Jessica Alba along with Paul Walker star as Sam and Jared, two slackers who spend their days and nights getting their skins bronzed by the Bahaman sun. Actually Walker is more of the slacker, since we’re meant to believe that Alba works as a tour guide at the local aquarium, when she’s shown interacting with dolphins in front of a school kids. Walker is more like a scavenger – using his dilapidated boat to dive and search the ocean floor for treasure, which has proven anything but fruitful. He did manage to land a beautiful mermaid like Alba, but how he pulled that off his a mystery, since this guy doesn’t appear to have a brain or a clue.

An even bigger brain–less individual is Walker’s pint sized best friend Scott Caan. What he lacks in height he makes up in stupidity. Caan turns up to visit Walker with “Birds of Prey” survivor Ashley Lynn Scott: a girl he claims to have picked up fourteen hours earlier. When this “Fantastic Four” set out to spend a day diving, drinking and working on their tans, they discover the wreckage of a drug transport plane on the ocean floor. Even dumber is the apparent remains of a treasure filled pirate ship several yards from the plane. What to do? What to do? Should they pool their resources and lay claim to the archeological find that is the pirate ship? Or should they try to transport the plane’s several kilos of cocaine and sell it off to the type of criminals that lawyer Caan works with, which is obviously right up his alley. After all he’s the son of a Corleone and I’m sure if he made a call to his daddy in “Las Vegas” he’d be at his side in a flash. Of course Walker and company’s oceanic activities begin to attract the attention of local drug dealer James Frain, his henchman Tyson Beckford and fellow treasure hunter Josh Brolin who looks like grungy, wet cat and should have turned in his “Goonies” membership card years ago. Frain isn’t easy on the eyes for me either and maybe that’s because I’ve never forgiven him for breaking in Natalie Portman in her first onscreen love scene in “Where The Heart Is” five years ago.

What initially attracted me to “Into the Blue” was not Alba (who I find overrated), and Ashley Lynn Scott in bikinis, not the island setting and definitely not Walker’s charisma (which is non-existent). Director John Stockwell has enjoyed considerable success with his previous efforts “Blue Crush”, “Crazy/Beautiful” and the cable movie “Cheaters” – films which demonstrated his ability to weave, intelligence, realism and sensitivity into youth-oriented stories. With his latest film, he isn’t sure if he wants to make a thriller or a tale of a bunch of friends drinking and arguing while hanging out. To be frank, the film is a complete mess, and would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so annoying. Alba and Walker not only share little chemistry, they’re boring to look at and listen to, not to mention, plain stupid. Their stupidity is unbelievable because they put up with Scott, who manages to shake her booty in the wrong direction, causing trouble for Caan in a club scene and Caan himself, whose shenanigans outrageously evolve to the point where one of the four gets their ass bit by a shark, literally! Even worse is that the stereotypical Bahaman natives that play in the film are either corrupt cops or broke friends of Walker who cry “I’ve got to go because my baby mama need a new weave!”

Surprisingly the underwater photography in the film is impressive; it’s just that half the time you don’t know who you’re observing because they’re all wearing scuba masks! Stockwell, a former actor (you may remember him as Keith Gordon’s best friend in “Christine” or the star of “My Science Project”) is no stranger to working with young actors, or even writing for them, so it is with great difficulty figuring out what kind of film he wanted to make. It he wanted an oceanic thriller filled with hot young bodies, he could have just made “National Treasure” underwater, with a touch of “The Deep” since that’s what it appears writer Matt Johnson was probably watching on TV before he sat in front of his keyboard. The little plot that exists within the film is just plain dumb, and Stockwell apparently is more interested in capturing shots of Alba’s butt underwater. Sure, she’s pleasing to look at, but how many times do we have to see her glide over the camera in close-ups that rival the Star Destroyer rocketing overhead at the beginning of “Star Wars”? These scenes are not even cut together well and Paul Van Dyk’s “Time of Our Lives” blares over the soundtrack for what seems like an eternity. Maybe Stockwell really wants to direct music videos.