Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Is this really the best way I could find to spend two hours?
Despite coming into this world at roughly the same time, I don’t remember much about the Fantasy Island television show. I remember Herve Villechaize and “De plane, de plane!” of course, but the only image of the series that has stuck with me over the years is of a scene with a bonfire that had a head in it. I’ve always assumed that it was supposed to be a mannequin head or something, because I doubt ABC would be so laissez faire as to air the depiction of melting flesh in primetime in the early 80’s, but it was pretty gruesome nonetheless (or at least 5-year-old Lucas thought so*). The show was not in the horror genre, but that fuzzy memory remains the scariest moment of the Fantasy Island franchise to me, even after watching the actual horror movie under the FI banner that came out earlier this year. Hollywood loves nothing more than exploiting the nostalgia of Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers for profit, no matter how ephemeral the source material, and Jason Blum’s throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks ethos provided the perfect production company to take a run at this particular rehash. Finally, America’s long national nightmare is over, and we can stop our passionate clamoring for a revival of that show we sort of remember watching forty years ago.
If you are unfamiliar with the concept of the original title, the idea is that a new guest star would fly to the island each week and be granted a fantasy by its proprietor, Mr. Rourke. The cast of fresh-faced young people that arrive in the recent film have fantasies that range from specific (“I wish I had said yes to a marriage proposal five years ago”) to maddeningly vague (“I want to have it all”). Of course, this being a horror movie, or simply just a movie where a person wishes for a thing, the fantasies all turn out to be sort of monkey-paw situations where the fantasies start out great but end up having a dark side. A film that really invested in that concept could be a lot of fun – it’s a well-worn trope for a reason – but Fantasy Island doesn’t have the wit to craft particularly interesting scenarios or the mean streak to pay them off with any sort of gusto. The one that comes the closest is a police officer who wants to be a soldier like his father (but can’t in real life for some reason I forget) and ends up in his father’s squad on the same mission where he died. That’s a strong enough premise for an episode of The Twilight Zone, at least, but the film doesn’t have the dramatic muscle to make it work. On the lazier end of the spectrum, we get dude-bro brothers Brax and JD, whose imaginations are so bereft that their wildest fantasy is a big party with hot people. The “payoff” for that one finds them hunted by a drug cartel, because I guess the party was funded by stolen cartel money? Apparently, the island operates on the philosophy of “bullshit fantasy in then bullshit twist out”. Anyway, it turns out that things are even less as they seem than suggested by the not-as-they-seem wish fulfillments, and nearly everyone was brought to the island under false pretenses. Sadly, the film doesn’t step up its game for the big reveal, which is just as lukewarm as the rest of them.
Look, I went into Fantasy Island expecting it to be godawful, yet it was merely bad. (There’s a pull-quote for the Blu-ray case!) Blumhouse movies (with occasional exceptions) all have the same glossy sheen and inattention to craft, but they do breeze by quickly and easily. I just get frustrated at the way they market their movies on a big fun hook, then don’t bother to follow through with it. Their business model of knocking the movies out on the cheap and then turning a modest profit off the backs (and pockets) of teenagers is a successful one, but I just wish someone there gave enough of a damn to attempt something interesting once and a while. For example, why cast the enormously magnetic Michael Pena in the inherently silly role of Mr. Rourke, and then direct him to turn in such a somber performance? It would have gone a long way to crank his character up to eleven and let him chew some scenery, and it probably would have been easier than tamping him down. The word “meh” is overused and caustically dismissive, so I try not to use it when discussing someone else’s hard work, no matter how apropos it might be. In this case, however, the movie (and the studio that produced it) are so synonymous with that expression that I can think of no other way to end my review. Just, meh.
*I was a big wuss about this stuff as a kid. There’s a part in Bill Cosby’s stand up special Himself where he talks about feeding his kids chocolate cake for breakfast, and then goes into detail about his wife’s resulting “conniption fit”. He really plays it up for comedic effect, describing her face peeling back to reveal her skull and shooting fire from her eye sockets and so forth. The first time I encountered The Cosby Show on television, I demanded that my babysitter change the channel immediately, because my little brain had somehow come to the conclusion that it was the live-action version of his comedy special, and at some point that terrifying conniption scene was going to come on.
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