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- "Cast Away"
(Reviewed December 12, 2000, by James Dawson)
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In seven words: Island stuff okay, everything else pretty bad.
I was stunned at how flat, dull and occasionally stupid and contrived the "non-Gilligan" parts of this movie were. Helen Hunt is just plain terrible as Tom Hanks' fiancee, but then again, she's
always terrible, so no big surprise there. (She has a very nicely shaped rear end, however. And we are treated to another shot of her in a soaking-wet blouse, a la "As Good As It Gets," but not as
revealing.) Hanks himself is all wrong for his "pre-Robinson-Crusoe" role as a driven, on-the-go FedEx honcho. I just didn't buy him as a schedule-obsessed hardass, jetting from country to country to
kick the company's foreign employees into shape. And when Hunt-'n'-Hanks are together onscreen, let's just say that movie magic definitely does NOT happen. (When they kiss, you can almost see them
waiting for someone to yell "Cut.")
The best performance in this film may well be the one turned in by a character named Wilson, with whom Hanks has a subtle and sometimes touching relationship. Seriously, you will be more
moved by the relationship between those two than by anything that happens between Hanks and anyone else.
After his plane takes a header into the Pacific, Hanks washes up on an uninhabited island where not much really happens, but everything looks beautiful. Maybe the filmmakers' intent was to convey how
monotonous a life without other people can be, but that won't stop you from waiting and hoping in vain for something on the island itself to kick the movie into higher gear and break things up a little. (For
some incomprehensible reason, one big and truly dramatic event that takes place on the island is only referred to in dialog well after it occurs, instead of being shown. Hey, guys, this is supposed to be a
MOVIE, not a radio play. Show, don't tell.)
Still, the day-to-day island-life scenes are at least kind of interesting to watch unfold...even if you do start thinking that Hanks must have a superhumanly miraculous resistance to infection, and
amazingly non-rotting white teeth. A couple more quibbles: The real-life Hanks shed some pounds to convey an onscreen wasted-away look, but not nearly enough of them. He gets thinner, but nowhere
near as emaciated as he should be in the amount of time that is supposed to pass. And there should have been at least one or two stray minutes showing him having more fun--on what is, as far as the
audience can see, a clean, hermetically sealed, virtual tropical paradise that is completely free of bugs, snakes, birds, wild animals, disease, and OTHER PEOPLE. If they sold vacation packages to this
heaven on earth, it would be booked year-round!
The movie's biggest flaws come at the conclusion (which I won't spoil, even though the moronic dolts in charge of the movie's marketing campaign already have completely ruined the ending in
the TV ads). A climactic scene that is insultingly unbelievable is followed by one that is insultingly contrived. Then those two scenes are followed by one that is just plain dumb. Sorry I can't explain further,
but that Just Wouldn't Be Right.
(Oh, what the hell, I can't resist. If you want to read what I really, really hated about the ending of this movie, click here. But be warned that WHAT YOU WILL
READ GIVES AWAY THE ENDING! You have been warned!)
What the heck has happened to director Robert Zemeckis, the guy who once made great movies like "Forrest Gump" and "Back to the Future?" This year he gives us this disappointing
missed-opportunity muddle and the awful, awful "What Lies Beneath." Yikes.
Back Row Grade: C-
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