Let’s see: It’s a Michael Bay film. There are explosions, chase scenes, shoot-outs, more chase scenes, an obligatory ‘sassy’ black character, and more explosions. Any more description would be futile. A film that only spits in the direction of Sci-Fi, The Island is a suprisingly conservative cautionary tale about the moral dangers of cloning, but you’ll be forgiven if you fail to discern that point from the audio/visual avalanche Bay subjects the audience to. Dumb, dumber, and dumbest.
The Island
2 & 1/2 Stars
 |
| Oh just kill me already |
Michael Bay films are the cinematic equivalent of a Pixie stick when you’re a kid. Sure, they seem like a good idea what with the 3 foot long straw filled with sugar, but halfway into it you realized you’ve made a horrible, horrible mistake; one that will leave you shaking and feeling ill. This summer’s Bay-helmed senses onslaught, The Island had advance word of being a smarter, more brainy strain of Michael Bay’s trademark shaky-cam boom fests. Yeah, right.
While the subject matter is about human cloning, calling The Island a sci-fi is enough of a stretch to make Reed Richards tremble. Seriously, folks: this film makes Small Wonder look like A Brief History of Time in comparison. The film opens in the near future with Lincoln Six Echo(Ewan McGregor, whose taste in roles might have been permanently damaged from 9 years of George Lucas) a confused and curious survivor of an cataclysmic plague, whose only purpose in life is to perform meaningless tasks and stay healthy, while waiting for his chance to win a trip to the Island, the last uncontaminated place on Earth. His curiosity gets him in trouble with the area security types, and he’s repeatedly commanded to speak with Dr. Merrick, the physician who watches over the citizens of the survivor compound. Eventually Lincoln suspicions get the better of him, leading him to discover that his world is an elaborate lie designed to keep the population docile. He convinces Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson, who looks rather unreal all gussied and glamoured up) in to escaping the compound and they make their way into the real world, pursued by a relentless team of mercenaries led by Djimon Hounsou, who will stop at nothing to retrieve them and return them to Merrick.
For the first 20 minutes, The Island seems like perhaps it is a Sci-Fi film, exploring the ethical boundaries of medicine and man’s need to be independent, but as soon as McGregor and Johansson leave the compound the film ceases to be distinguishable from any other film Michael Bay has made, with the exception of hovercraft trains, flying motorcycles, and whatever concept car they could get a product placement fee for. Chevy, Cadillac, Aquafina, MSN, AmEx…no plug is too ostentatious for this film! Of course, the requisite Bay touches are there in full effect: Explosions, a body count roughly equivalent to the Black Plague, plot and logic holes big enough to contain Star Jones battling Godzilla, and last but not least, saucy black characters who only exists for one or two lines of appropriately sassy and eyeball bugging dialogue. (I have a theory that Michael Bay films are actually a fiendish plot to push back race relations 10 years.)
Had Ewan McGregor not been his normally charming and compelling self, I might have replaced my eyeballs with Milk Duds in an attempt to end the horror. Thankfully, he throws himself into his dual role with abandon, making what could have been a root canal into a mere teeth scraping.
Folks, this movie is stupid. Unabashedly, ridiculously stupid. Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle stupid. Will it make a lot of money? Probably, seeing as America is probably worn out from the intellectually top heavy summer fare like Revenge of the Sith, Batman, and Bewitched. I’d like to say it’s the stupidest movie of the Summer, but that honor goes to Stealth (which I’ll have a review of next week). So if you’re forced to see it this weekend, I recommend at least a fifth of rot-gut whiskey beforehand. With any luck you’ll pass out or vomit, with either choice being more entertaining that what’s on the screen.
Folks, this movie is stupid. Unabashedly, ridiculously stupid. Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle stupid. Will it make a lot of money? Probably, seeing as America is probably worn out from the intellectually top heavy summer fare like Revenge of the Sith, Batman, and Bewitched. I’d like to say it’s the stupidest movie of the Summer, but that honor goes to Stealth (which I’ll have a review of next week). So if you’re forced to see it this weekend, I recommend at least a fifth of rot-gut whiskey beforehand. With any luck you’ll pass out or vomit, with either choice being more entertaining that what’s on the screen.
Ever wonder what would happen if you took half the script for Iron Eagle 2 and half the script for Short Circuit and removed anything remotely good, or funny, or interesting? I didn’t either, but obviously the makers of this film needed to solve this philosophical dilemma.
