by JOANNE LATIMER

In the opening moments of Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s latest movie, he tries to create a magical moment between him and his girlfriend by booking them on a hot-air-balloon ride. Up they go, and before Gooding, Jr. manages to pop the marital question, motion sickness gets the best of him and he pukes all over his girlfriend.

It's all downhill from there in Boat Trip, the ingeniously titled movie about two hapless love-starved heteros (Gooding, Jr. and Horatio Sanz) who take a singles trip and find that - wait for it - they're actually on an all-gay boat cruise!

Sounds offensive, right? No, if it were offensive, it might actually be kind of intriguing. Instead, it's awe-inspiring simply because it's so terrifically bad. Every lifeless joke that could possibly be played is played here, in what is inadvertently a veritable don't-do list for screenwriting classes. There are endless innuendoes about sexual orientations, mistaken identities, gags about severe homosexual panic and Gooding, Jr. mining that guy-falling-into-the-pool shtick. Word is that GLAAD, the queer media watchdog group, consulted on this one, and that might have something to do with the whole operation being so entirely bland. After all, films that initially offended gays - think Desperate Living, Cruising and Basic Instinct, to name but three - usually turn out to be heralded by queers in on-second-thought-style reviews. Instead, Boat Trip lurches along, from one weak-kneed gag to the next, making a below-average episode of The Love Boat look like the work of Jane Austen.

As well as being a sad commentary on the state of the American comedy - a genre that once stood tall and proud - Boat Trip appears as a cautionary tale about the pratfalls of pursuing an acting career. While watching this, I thought I must have hallucinated that burning image in my mind of star Gooding, Jr. having accepted an Oscar a few years back. But I looked it up, and he did. Indeed, he went from that win (for Jerry Maguire) to the dogs (literally, with Snow Dogs) to a boat load of homosexuals. Could it get any worse? :

Boat Trip opens Friday, March 21

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