Same Boat (Review)

Same Boat Goes Overboard with its Premise.

Let me start by saying that I admire the chutzpah of Same Boat. Like Escape from Tomorrow, it was filmed in secret, though this movie takes place on a cruise ship rather than at Disney. Guerrilla filmmaking is no easy task, so it’s hard not to feel like Same Boat started off with one hand tied behind it’s back. While I understand that it was filmed on a cruise ship, it also feels like the script was also conceived under the influence of cabin fever. The film is a bit too ambitious for its means and while it certainly has a few surprisingly well-executed moments, Same Boat failed to leave much of an impression on me. 

Usually, I try to come up with a brief synopsis of the movies I review to give readers an idea of what they’re in for, but the makers of the movie summed it up pretty well themselves:

Same Boat is “a time-traveling assassin rom-com filmed on a cruise ship.”

If you think that sounds a bit clunky, you’re right. The movie frappes genres together like a blender full of ice, booze, and pina colada mix. An assassin from the future (Chris Roberti) is sent to kill a woman who is a threat to the future (Tonya Glanz). Per usual, they meet and sparks fly. Soon, the assassin doesn’t know if he can follow through on his job and starts to question everything he’s ever believed. 

The thing about Same Boat is that if it had just toned itself down then it could have been a really good movie. Roberti has the sort of stoner charm that’s become more and more endearing recently with pot going mainstream, and Glanz has that sort of unbashful sarcasm that translates into “I’m an independent woman who doesn’t need no man, but really enjoys sex and intimacy.” Strip away the assassin and time-travel elements, and this could have been a solid rom-com resting purely on the shoulders of the chemistry between the two leads. After all, writers Josh Itzkowitz and Roberti come up with some decent dialogue for the leads and supporting characters. All of that gets too muddled in the genre-blending that overcomplicates the plot until it’s too far gone to be salvaged.

Same Boat’s grasp exceeds its means, and that’s the film’s biggest downfall. It mixes in a sci-fi element when it doesn’t seem to have the budget to pull that aspect off. The most futuristic thing we see is (what I believe to be) a digital tire pressure gauge that’s supposed to be a euthanasia device (much like a bolt gun in a slaughterhouse). I’m all for suspension of disbelief, but a movie has to be able to reward me for doing it. Same Boat doesn’t offer much in return for buying into the whole time travel aspect. In fact, I found myself patiently waiting for the film to give me something, anything that I could really buy into along these lines. Aside from some stoner philosophy about the flow of time, there isn’t much to sink your teeth into. I would have settled for the movie even repeating a few sequences as Roberti’s character tried to get things right a second or third time. On top of that, it’s hard to really see him as the kind of professional killer elite enough to be trusted with the future of humanity.

More than anything, Same Boat’s plot lacks cohesion. There are a lot of elements in it that don’t make sense. Scenes feel jumbled together without a clear segway from one to another, leaving the audience to cobble together what’s happening at times. Mostly though, it feels like it’s trying to eat up screen time and stretch as far as it can into feature film length. This is irritating only because there are some moments that feel natural and genuine. Evan Kaufman is great as a heartbroken, sad sap. David Bly is pretty funny as a part-time magician with pearls of wisdom he absent-mindedly drops throughout the film. There’s really no shortage of talent, just not enough sense to reign it in and distill into something truly good.

Same Boat is one of those instances where I find myself respecting the artists, but not so much the art. Ambitious as it was, the end result makes the film feel like a bunch of friends goofing around on a cruise ship. I’m sure dodging staff and other cruise-goers made things difficult, which is why I believe that the film should have taken a less-is-more approach. A romantic comedy shot in secret on a cruise could have been fantastic with a small cast and crew. Throwing in so many other elements just for the sake of being unique ended up undermining the whole project. That being said, this might be the best time-traveling-assassin-rom-com-secretly-shot-on-a-cruise-ship movie I’ve ever seen, but that’s because I’m fairly certain there is no other movie that tries to work in all those elements.