The Island
SD and I went to go see The Island tonight (this was after a pretty funny conversation in the afternoon we had about the merits of seeing Snoop Dogg that night for free at the Shell) ... One of the things that really amazed me was how "crowded" the theatre was at Koolau -- I haven't seen a crowd like that at a non-top tier blockbuster movie in quite awhile, and especially on a night with a concert in town and the Superbrawl also
I didn't pay attention to the rating but I did notice that there were a lot of families there and a lot of age diversity from old to young ... it made me wonder if I was the only one who wasn't paying attention to the hype?
What to say, what to say ... well, the movie is largely mixed, and at the conclusion, I hadn't had such a feeling of well ... so what since perhaps AI... or some other really amazingly cinematic endings that are only visually interesting and nothing else. Also of note, the movie is very loud, of course, we come to expect that in the combo of Koolau big auditorium and Bay movie
Anyways, what was an interesting premise went awry ... if you don't know the premise is sort of scifi in an Outer Limits way, however LACKING IN A BIG BIG WAY, the subtlety or creativity that we love from TOL or Twilight Zone
I guess I had the feeling that someone missed a Soylent Green moment in there, in other words, soon after the big secret is finally revealed ... well, the movie turns into a loud, cinematically interesting chase sequence after chase sequence ... that at the end of the day had no practical value of moving the overall narrative ahead
Back from my tangent, this movie seemed to have a lot of potential on two fronts, it had the big loud, popcorn popping summer blockbuster bigness and action ... it had a fairly decent premise that I think could have been a lot better carried out
The premise is this ... in the middle part of the 21st century, cloning of human beings is not only possible, but can provide a quasi-youth to people who buy "insurance policies" against organ failure, catastrophic accidents, or for cosmetic reasons like aging. The clones are immaculately farmed to be precisely the age of the donee, or in non-lawyer speak, the recipient.
How the clones are raised, and the premise behind that ... is well fraught with continuity issues and poor plot conception because the explanation is so convoluted and inconsistent, that the viewer can either supply their own explanation ... or just pass it over. Suffice it to say, the answers given are not fantastic as to be sci-fi or practical from a "human" standpoint to be logical scientifically, but enough of that
The movie turns into the aforementioned chase film when one of the clones essentially starts showing human qualities unplanned for ... what some people have called "soul" ... what I would call persistence of life, or that urge people get to experience, survive, etc ... the life process of being unique or forming identity
In the end, I suppose my problem with it is that it is somewhat disjointed, I would tend to agree with the Rog that this is really two stories, and the difficulty in viewing it is that they don't necessarily relate to one another in a compelling way, although the parts can be interesting by themselves
I found it ironic that half the audience seemed to be loving certain parts or it, and then the other half would like the other part of it. I guess in the final analysis, I just think it was a big schmozz, and the good parts in each just frustrate you that it could have been a better film overall
Our rating: C- ... or barely passable, definitely one of those $1 movies movies