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‘Into the Blue’ runs out of excuses

The adventure film is more about bikinis than buried treasure

I intimately know Jessica Alba’s ass. I have explored its curves. I have beheld it from every possible angle. Four times.

And I’m upset about it.

The premise of “Into the Blue” requires Alba to be in a bikini for 90 percent of the film. But the film doesn’t have to be disrespectful about it.

And “Into the Blue” is truly disrespectful. It disrespects women, yes, but most of all, it disrespects its audience’s intelligence.

Of course, “Into the Blue” is not meant to be a smart film. It’s a thriller – with guns and cocaine and snorkeling and sharks and miniskirts and night clubs and buried treasure and plane crashes and pirates.

Oh, and Jet Skis. Not 10 minutes into the film, we take a two-minute break to watch a music video of our main characters jumping and jiving on Jet Skis through the ocean waters of the Bahamas.

I have not seen padding so obvious since the volleyball scene in “Saved by the Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas.”

After Jet Skiing, Jared (Paul Walker) and the film’s racist, miserable excuse for comic relief, Bryce (Scott Caan), then wrestle in the water for a while. And then, at long last, something happens.

Jared loses his watch. He dives to the ocean floor to find it but instead discovers treasure. Perhaps, we think, this is treasure from the plane we saw crash into the water in the film’s frantic first minutes.

But no, this is treasure from a pirate ship, the Zephur, which Jared, “a 29-year-old dive bum,” has long dreamed of finding. But don’t worry. The plane crashed about 200 yards away.

Drug lords and treasure hunters have long searched for the wreckage. If only they had known that all they needed to find them were a powerboat and a few snorkels.

Jared and his girlfriend, Sam (Alba), want to ignore the plane’s load of cocaine. But their two buddies want the quick cash. And they go behind the pair’s back to get it.

People end up dying, by drug dealers and by sharks with an appetite for bad guys. In the end, Jared must survive by the lesson his girlfriend and the pirate ship tell. He must choose between love and money.

It’s a cliché, of course. But more annoying than the cliché is the way the film manages to mess it up.

We have no sense for Jared and Sam’s connection, besides that they are both gorgeous and like making out. And we don’t truly understand their love of diving.

This is, in part, because most diving scenes focus not on nature’s beauty but on the two’s bodies.

Director John Stockwell wasn’t hesitant to display surfers’ buffness in his film “Blue Crush.” But he did so in a way that empowered their athleticism.

With “Into the Blue,” the camera molests its female actors. At one point, it gazes up between a woman’s legs as she sunbathes.

Sam isn’t allowed to speak in a scene until we first see her bikini-clad butt. She is not allowed to show her face until we first see her cleavage.

At the end of the film, Sam saves herself. She is resourceful, smart and strong. But it’s too little too late.

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