"Cast Away" reaction (beware the spoilers)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Okay, for those who missed the comment in the subject header, there WILL be spoilers in this thread. My big beef was with the end, so it will be a supremo spoiler. If you don’t want to know, go away now.

I mean it!

Okay, now that they’re gone…I can’t believe they had him just walk away from Kelly. Talk about an anticlimactic ending! “You’re the love of my life.” Pause. “Well, I have to go back to my house and other life now, even though my life is a hollow shell of what it was before you crahsed.” Pause. Jack goes away, and continues delivering Fed Ex. [Homer]BOR-ING![/Homer]

WTF!?

Now look, I know that realistically, Kelly would quite possibly be married…but it isn’t a given. Hell, I have a friend whose hubby died of cancer three years ago, and she hasn’t even thought about dating since. It’s a potential possibility that she hadn’t moved on. So there.

I’m just pissed that the film called on me to suspend reality enough while he was on the island–such as the liklihood that he would have gotten sick, an infection (esp. from that highly bacteria-laden coral), salmonella from eating raw fish, massive absess from ripping that tooth out of his mouth, etc. Four years of that, and his body basically gets a solid tan and long (and lighter) hair, period. Um…yeah. Then, he comes home–the part I was looking forward to the whole frickin’ flick–and finds out, oh well, that chick he dreamed about for four years is no longer there for him.

Grr.

Really, I liked it better when he was on the island. (And btw, anyone else hear about how Wilson (the company) was going to come out with a volleyball with that had the bloody handprint face on it? Weird.)

Other thoughts about this film?

2

This movie sucked. It had a great concept. It had a great lead actor. It did everything it intended to do. However, I think that its intentions were weak and not bold enough.

Tom Hanks’ line near the end by the fireplace of “The sun will rise tomorrow. I just need to keep breathing…blah, blah, blah.” Does this sound familiar? No? Then I suggest you go rent “Sleepless in Seattle”, and watch his conversation with the radio show host.

Was Hanks’ conversation with Helen Hunt in the kitchen a key, pivotal moment in the movie? You bet. In real life would this conversation be as awkward and as painful to watch as it was in the movie? You bet. Did this movie moment consist of anything more than a bad southern accent from a poorly motivated Hunt or a recycled Hanks character? Nope.

I loved the island scenes. I thought the psychological journey Noland went through was 100% accurate. However, all we see are the landmarks of this journey, and sometimes, we only heard about these landmarks in brief references (Noland’s suicide contemplation). Yes, I agree that if we would have chronologically seen Hanks’ character go through this, the dialogue with Wilson regarding the extra footage of rope wouldn’t have been nearly as poignant (I thought this was by far the best part of the film). But I think if you would have chopped off 45 minutes of schlock at the end of this movie, and put in a silent film flashback of the suicide-related events coupled with a Hanks’ review of what happened, it would have been millions of times better.

I was so disappointed in this movie. I had been so excited to see it, but it turns out they left the best stuff out. Two sentences completely ruined the movie for me. “Four years later”, and “Four weeks later”. I’d have loved to see Hanks being picked up by the boat, and him sleeping in his first bed, or eating his first real meal, or taking his first shower, or TALKING TO THE FIRST REAL PERSON in four years.

People talk about how wonderful his transition to modern life was portrayed. What transition? All we saw was his reaction to a lighter, ice cubes, and seafood.

When this comes out on video, I’ll watch it, hoping that I missed something. But if this wins Best Picture, I’ll have lost all faith in the movie industry.

3

In my hurried and rather sloppy typing of the OP (I was off to the surgery of mentioned in my other OP of the day), I failed to completely capture my disappointment with the film. I, too, found the film far more interesting while he was still on the island, and everything–everything–that happened after his return to civilized life seemed thrown together at the last minute. It was obviously the afterthought of the writers–and it ruined the rest of the film.

He seemed to return to “normal,” psychologically, awfully damn easily. The writers and directors both missed out on a key opportunity by skipping him being actually rescued, actually speaking to and seeing a human (and ones who did not speak English, at that) for the first time in four years, putting on clothing again, getting on a freakin’ PLANE again, taking a bath, making contacts, etc, so forth, and so on.

Southern accents? Were there southern accents in this film? Rather, I noticed that everyone who lived in Memphis (and Texas, too, for that matter) had no accent. None. That was curious (I tried to set it aside in my mind, thinking, “Well, maybe he just moved there. Um…maybe they all just moved there…Um…”).

No one seemed interested in checking out his physical condition, at least on screen. They did, apparently, give him a shave and a haircut.

Yes, call me a goofy romantic, I ultimately was looking forward to the reunion with Kelly. I was curious to see how it was handled, how Kelly adjusted (or didn’t), how lives were affected, how it would turn her life inside out…a fainting spell and the (yes, very realistic) awkward conversation over coffee was pretty much all we got. That, and the “You’re the love of my life,” <pause> “I have to go home,” malarkey I mentioned in the OP, was all we got. Booooooo!

There’s no way this thing will get an Oscar for anything.

Except maybe for Wilson…supporting actors are hard to come by, after all.

4

I didn’t mind suspending disbelief for a couple of hours. I know it wasn’t his best movie, but my main complaint is that the movie ended, but the camera didn’t stop. The movie was about five minutes too long.