Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10
Cast: Michael Pena, Maggie Q, Lucy Hale, Austin Stowell, Jimmy O. Yang, Portia Doubleday, Ryan Hansen, Michael Rooker, Parisa Fitz-Henley, Mike Vogel, Kim Coates, Robbie Jones, Jeriva Benn, Charlotte McKinney, Josh McConville, Tane Williams-Accra, Edmund Lembke-Hogan, Ian Roberts, Evan Evagora, Goran D. Kleut, Josh Randall, Joshua Diaz, Andrew Lees, Nick Slater.
As British musician Thomas Dolby once elegantly, perhaps mischievously, once sang, “There is nothing new under the sun“, and whilst you can always put a new twist on an old theme, put a new cover on an old favourite chair, it doesn’t make it original; it doesn’t fool anyone into believing anything but that it is of illusion and memory for once stood out.
However, we live in age where the redesign is quite often the only project on the books and is the only way we can reinterpret our early memories of what filled our dreams and visions, and if a different reading can be inserted to the mix, then we at least might be able to spend time creating the fictional narrative to suit our more mature needs.
In life we seek the do over, the chance to correct the mistakes and the lapses of good morale judgement, we play out in our minds how we would rectify the issue and make the feelings of regret disappear, or at least easier to bare. We play these thoughts over in our mind and wear ourselves out, we exhaust our souls in the pursuit of forgiveness. If we could find a Fantasy Island where such troubles could be arranged, just how would that be, for some it would be heaven, for others, surely it would a continuation of the Hell they have created for themselves.
Jeff Wadlow takes that approach in a once familiar setting to people of a certain age, and turns it slightly on its head, the same premise of ideals which had a television audience hooked, but one that is happy to delve into the darker reaches of the pain we endure as we ruminate on all we did wrong in life. In Fantasy Island, the change is such that the proof of six degrees of separation is in actual fact a reality, all the guests have their own fantasies, but they also have their contrasting grief and shame which binds them; and this particular version of Fantasy Island plays on that shame with abundance.
There are times when a remake will shine, others will be like drinking off grade oil and then being asked to swallow a lit match, Fantasy Island sits somewhere between the two, curious enough to have sat through, but it is arguably never going to change your life, it is not going to blow your mind, but it at least won’t leave you drained and seeking forgiveness from the gods of cinema for having wasted a couple of hours of your life.
A film for the dead of night when the time between the tick and tock is slow, when the reality of life is too much, sometime a little fantasy will get you through.
Ian D. Hall