Bayesque

Well, I did one movie review before, but haven't since. Mainly because a) I think I suck at them, and b) who reads this...

But, I just finished watching the Michael Bay Product Advertisement, the Island.
Now, I'm not a movie snob in the sense that I only want to watch indie flicks that delve into character relationships between a tortured painter and his sign language capable monkey. I'll take most movies from straight up popcorn to a sign language monkey's internal struggle between monkeydom and humanity.

But, I have a bias, and that bias is against a man named Michael Bay. He likes to blow shit up in movies and... who can't enjoy that, but for some reason his movies never seem to have a soul. They consist of many slow-mo, or 360 pans around a character, lots of helicopter shots, and usually characters talking with the sun as a backdrop, making the character's dark.

And sometimes this works out, I enjoyed The Rock, and Armageddon was pretty good, but then we get two Bad Boys films, and the awesome... Pearl Harbor.

The Island falls somewhere in between. He has great actors working for him, Sean Bean, Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, and Djimon Hounsou. And they keep the movie somewhat watchable. The problem remains that you never really care why anything is happening. It's like Bay and the screenwriters just assumed that we would automatically care for these clones (if it spoiled it for you... then you never saw a trailer), because they were living false, meaningless lives - just replacement parts. But it doesn't happen, whatever moral quandry that we were supposed to just feel(and we know the concept, but movies should make us FEEL it) never occurs.

The movie just never draws you in, and then the multiple product placements for some reason ...use MSN search and drink Aquafina water... are more noticable than ever.

Near the end we see a spark of feeling shot into the movie through Djimon Hounsou, but it's too little too late.

Thus, the Island is yet another movie where a good film is just beneath the scenes shimmering, if only someone had saw it while on the set. If you're bored, and you want to see good actors in just-ok roles, and you want some slow-mo action, then you could do worse than the Island.