White Squall. First off, what the fuck is a squall? Secondly, why is it white? Do squalls come in any other color? Could you have chosen a less marketable title for your movie?

White Squall is the story of a sea captain (a man who is dancing dangerously close to the line of pedophilia) that loads his sailing yacht to the gunwales with supple, shirtless, young boys, to "teach" them, and then gets caught in a storm (oooh a White Squall), sinks his ship, kills half of them, the crew, and his wife.....and is put on trial where he loses his captain's license. That's it. That's White Squall!

Ok, so lets go back to our first question. What is a White Squall (aside from a really shitty movie)? A white squall, by definition, is (thank you dictionary.com) a whirlwind at sea or a violent disturbance of small radius not accompanied by clouds but indicated merely by whitecaps and turbulent water. Ok great. So essentially the title of this movie is the natural phenomen that kills them, and takes up all of 5 of the 129 torturous minutes. Calling this movie White Squall, is as clever as calling a movie about JFK, Rifle. Fucking brilliant.

So Jeff Bridges plays the Skipper who captains this school on the high seas. A 'working' ship, where young boys can parade around shirtless and learn the benefits of a nautical education, and perhaps some regular schooling peppered in, and provided by the Skipper's wife (who also is the ships doctor), and the cook (who is also the captains first mate). So parents for some reason agree to send their kids on a ship for a semester at sea, rather than attend an actual school. Are they kidding? A school on a yacht makes about as much sense as opening a school in a strip club. How much are you actually going to learn?

White Squall, collects some of 1996's hottest young men which include Scott Wolf (of Party of Five, and Double Dragon fame), Jeremy Sisto (Suicide Kings), Ryan Phillipe (the former Mr. Reese Witherspoon....good move dumping that meal ticket by the way), Balthazar Getty (he was in Young Guns 2....., Grissom from CSI, and Vigo Mortesson killed him), Ethan Embry (Vegas Vacation...way to jump on that franchise at the right time.....why not buy some Enron stock now), and a bunch of other assholes. So this collection of trust fund babies get a ride on this elitist vessel of knowledge....and a one way ticket to their doom. Honestly by the end of White Squall the only thing I was pissed about was that the storm wasn't more efficient and killed them all.

The characters are completely unlikeable, so you really don't care what happens to them. Jeff Bridges character is such an asshole, that he makes Anthony Hopkins portrayal of Captain Bligh in The Bounty seem like a great guy (if you haven't seen The Bounty, check it out, it's worth it just to hear Hopkins yelling at Mel Gibson... DAMN YOU MR. CHRISTIAN!! DAMN YOU SIR!!). I'm amazed the crew didn't fuck him up and toss his ass overboard. However there was little need, since the Skipper was a completely incompetent sea-man and drove his ship to the bottom of the ocean anyway. White Squall ties itself up with a long-winded, and completely unecessary court room scene, that ends with the surviving boys speaking on his behalf. The whole movie could have ended with the traditional slow clap (Not Another Teen Movie), but chose to go with the ringing of the ships bell (yeah good job saving that precious item assholes while your friends were drowning below deck), which I guess was some symbolic full circle gesture that was lost on me (much like the entire feature).

Unless you are into young shirtless boys, being repeatedly berated by an old asshole on a sailboat (which means men of the cloth will love this flick), White Squall has nothing to offer you. Thankfully most of the young men in White Squall watched their career's sink faster than the ship did after this bad movie.

Hamlin Grade: 1.5

Timothy Dalton is the one true James Bond,
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