Martin Harvey, a middle-class Chicago office worker, inherits a yacht which once belonged to Clark Gable from his recently deceased uncle. Martin, who longs for some adventure in his dull life, makes plans to take his family to Sainte Pomme de Terre, the improbably-named Caribbean island (it means "Saint Potato") where the yacht is currently stationed, and sail the yacht back to Miami to sell it via a firm of yacht brokers. His wife Katherine originally is opposed to his scheme, but changes her mind when their 16-year-old daughter Caroline announces her engagement to a young man of whom she does not approve.
There are two problems with the plan. The yacht, although basically seaworthy, turns out to be shabby and dilapidated, and therefore less valuable than Martin had hoped. Also, Martin and the family know nothing of the sea or sailing, so need a professional captain to sail the yacht for them. And the titular Captain Ron, the man supplied by the brokers, turns out to be only slightly more competent than the Harvey family. He has only one eye and is frequently drunk. He claims to be a US Navy veteran and to have been helmsman on the USS Saratoga, but the truth of this statement is doubtful as he has only a basic knowledge of seamanship and a complete inability to navigate. Martin takes an instant dislike to Ron, whom he names "Moron", but Caroline and her younger brother Ben think he is wonderful. The film follows the adventures of Ron and the Harveys as they make their way across the Caribbean to Miami.
Captain Ron is played by Kurt Russell who four years earlier had made another comedy with a maritime theme, "Overboard". The two films, however, are very different in quality, "Overboard" being superior by far. One criticism commonly made of "Captain Ron" is that Martin Short, an actor specialising in comedy, is miscast as Martin Harvey, who plays the straight man to Russell's comic character; it has been suggested that the film might have been improved had Short and Russell exchanged roles. We cannot know what the film might have been like had this been done, but it might well have been an improvement. Ron is supposed to be basically likeable, but I found that Russell played him as such an idiot that I could not warm to him, hoping that he would end up marooned on a desert island, or forced to walk the plank, or suffering some other suitably nautical punishment for his being such an all-round prat and endangering the family's lives through his incompetence.
Another weakness is that the film has more plot than it knows what to do with. The family have a number of adventures, any one of which could in itself have formed the basis for a whole film. Martin is captured by guerrillas while exploring an island. The family are arrested by the authorities who suspect the of being in collusion with the guerrillas, and have an encounter with pirates. Nothing is really made of any of these incidents, however, all of which are brushed off too easily.
When the film first came out in 1992 it was unpopular with both audiences and critics, in my view deservedly so. It has not aged well and today comes across as one those dull nineties comedies which fail to amuse and which it would be kinder to forget. 4/10
A goof (or perhaps a plot hole). Martin is kidnapped after being warned by Ron not to go into the forest that there are guerrillas there. Martin mishears this as "gorillas" and, knowing that gorillas are not found in the Caribbean, dismisses the warning on the basis that Ron does not know what he is talking about. Yet how does Ron know that there are guerrillas in the forest? His lack of navigational skills means that he does not even know what island they have landed on.
