Beached centers on a chubby 4-year-old child who falls overboard during a family outing, is raised by whales and goes on to become a champion swimmer.

I need a cigarette.

It sounds so stupid that I immediately thought that it must be a true story, because it’s too dumb for someone to make up. Then I remember that if a person needs to be “raised” by water animals, at some point their legs will get tired of swimming and they will drown. I would guess it would take a four year-old about 38 seconds to drown, not giving the whales a lot of time to do “raising.”

Eh. Chubby kids are buoyant, but not buoyant enough to tread water for their entire adolescence. Unless the child is just crazy-fat, which would take the film from good to great.

What’s most amazing is that Beached has been going around for 15 years, meaning that people keep trying to make this movie. What’s only slightly less amazing than that is the fact that the original draft was penned by Ted Griffin, who wrote Ocean’s Eleven, which is by my account a “good” movie.

(Go for applause.)