Captain Ron | Through the Shattered Lens

1992’s Captain Ron opens with Martin Harvey (Martin Short) suffering through another day as a corporate drone in Chicago. What is Martin’s job like? It’s the type of job where there’s broken glass on the sidewalk because someone jumped out a window. Martin is ready for an escape and he gets it when he’s informed that his deceased uncle has left him a yacht that once belonged to Clark Gable. The only catch is that the yacht is on a Caribbean island and Martin will need to sail it to Miami if he wants to sell it. Martin decides this will be a great opportunity get away from cold Chicago with his wife (Mary Kay Place), daughter (Meadow Sisto), and son (Benjamin Salisbury).

It turns out that the yacht is in terrible shape. And so, for that matter, is the sailor who has been assigned to help the Harveys set sail. Ron “Everyone calls me Captain Ron” Rico (Kurt Russell) is a somewhat slovenly drunk who wears sunglasses over his eyepatch and who is in debt to some dangerous people. It also turns out that, despite talking a big game, Captain Ron is fairly incompetent as a navigator. He knows how the boat works. He knows how to keep the engine from overheating. He knows how to borrow Martin’s video camera so he can film Marin’s wife and daughter while they walk around top deck. What Captain Ron can’t do is actually get the boat to where it needs to go. Instead, Captain Ron takes the family to a number of islands, gets them into trouble with pirates, and also becomes the surrogate father-figure that the family needs.

There’s a lot to criticize about Captain Ron. The script cannot quite decide just who exactly it wants these characters to be. Moments of sentimental family comedy are mixed with scenes of Captain Ron leering at Martin’s wife and daughter. Martin and his wife get stuck in the boat’s shower and I’ll admit that I laughed at the scene because something similar happened to me in college but it still felt as if it was included solely to get the movie up to a PG-13. The film has the making of being a wild comedy but it never quite goes as far as it could. Martin gets upset but he never gets truly frantic, which is a waste of Martin Short’s talents. Ron has the makings to be a true force of chaos but the film instead just makes him incompetent. There’s an odd scene where Martin considers shooting Captain Ron with a flare gun. It comes out of nowhere and it’s not ever mentioned again. It hints at a film that could have been a lot more subversive than it turned out to be.

That said, I did enjoy Captain Ron. The island scenery is lovely. The shots of that dilapidated yacht on the ocean do, almost despite themselves, achieve a sort of grandeur. And then you’ve got Kurt Russell, wearing a red speedo and apparently having the time of his life as the incompetent yet rather cocky Captain Ron. It’s a fun performance, even if the film sometimes doesn’t seem to be sure what to do with it. That the film remains watchable is a testament to the charm of Kurt Russell. Much like the title character, Captain Ron is a film that’s likable even when it shouldn’t be.

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