Twelve years after graduating from high school, three friends, Jerry, Dan, and Tom, find out that their childhood friend Billy has died in a parasailing accident. After the funeral, they revisit the group's old tree-house and find a map leading to D. B. Cooper's lost treasure, which Billy had apparently been working on for his entire life. Dan takes a break from his job as a doctor and joins Jerry and Tom on a camping trip to find the treasure. They take a canoe down the river and eventually stop on the riverside for the night. They discover that they forgot to bring food, so Tom goes out to catch some fish. However, the activity attracts a grizzly bear to their position, and the bear chases the group into a tree. In the morning, the group find all of their gear has been ripped up and completely destroyed by the bear. The trio takes off into the river but are unable to read the map, causing them to go the wrong way. They fall off of a waterfall, and while they survive, their canoe is destroyed. They venture into the woods with a compass and find themselves at a pot farm where two farmers, Dennis and Elwood, mistake them for thieves and start shooting at them. They escape, burning the pot garden down in the process. This enrages the farmers, who decide to hunt them down and kill them. Later, far into the forest the trio meets two hippie girls, Flower and Butterfly, who treat them in their tree. Using a radio the farmers find them, but the hippie girls drop paper bags full of feces at the farmers to distract them while the trio escapes. They are saved from the thunderstorm by a mountain man who takes them to his hut and provides them with clothes. The mountain man later reveals himself to be Del Knox, Cooper's partner before his death. The next morning, the farmers find them and assault the house. The trio escapes while Del shoots at the two farmers with his dual wield revolvers. The trio stumbles upon the site of Cooper's crash-landing where they discover Cooper's corpse and the suitcase that he used to hold the ransom money, and they realize that Cooper burned his share of the money in an attempt to survive. As Dan crawls through a small tunnel to find a way out, the farmers find Tom and Jerry, and a fistfight ensues. Eventually, Sheriff Briggs, who had earlier helped the trio, intervenes. He then reveals himself to be the farmers' employer. Jerry arms a grenade taken from Dennis and throws it towards the pot dealers. It explodes, causing a tree to fall on the farmers and the sheriff, who are soon arrested. In the closing scenes, Del gives Tom, Jerry and Dan the remains of D.B's non burnt money but Jerry and Dan decide Tom needs it more than them so they let Tom keep the fortune, while Del gives D.B.'s remains a proper funeral. Jerry proposes to his girlfriend Denise, Dan starts a relationship with Flower, and Tom becomes a camp counselor for a children's summer camp where he ends up telling his troop an exaggerated version of the trip.
Frank Welker as Deer and Grizzly Bear and Lynyrd & Skynyrd
Reception
Box office
The film grossed $58,169,327 in North America, and $69,631,118 worldwide.
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 14% based on 126 reviews, with an average rating of 3.9 out of 10. The website's consensus states: "Without a Paddle has a few laughs, but not enough to sustain its running time." On Metacritic the film has a score of 29% based on reviews from 27 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B+ on scale of A to F. Dennis Harvey of Variety called it: "An unstable -- if mostly painless -- mix of low comedy, stabs at higher silliness, and schmaltz." Entertainment Weekly's Scott Brown was more positive and wrote: "There are some genuinely clever moments of physical comedy, and the inevitable crudeness is offset by winning whimsy. Without has all the freshness of moldering Playboys stashed under a mattress, but it evokes what few boys-will-be-boys larks can: chumminess."
