peteryac

This is exactly what a indie comedy should be and why it exists. Very dryly funny, sometimes hilarious, sometimes impactful, in a very real and concrete milieu. Terrific comedy performances from every single cast member, there's not one weak link. The innocent ineptitude of the schemers-- e.g. Marc Maron's "I just don't want to die"-- chokes me up with laughter.

This is the kind of movie that was never advertised, barely went to theaters, made no money and disappeared immediately. This kind of annoys me, because in terms of its technical and artistic merit it's at least as good, if not better, as the thrillers coming out today from Netflix, HBOMax, and the rest. I normally hate to use phraseology like this, but in the case its true, so here goes: Is it an undiscovered masterpiece? NO. Is it a proficient, entertaining, and well-made movie with quality work in every department? YES. Micheal Keaton is terrific as always; this is from the period when he was eager to get back in the mainstream and he's firing on all thrusters. Nobody phones anything in. As a Keaton fan I was very please to watch it. I'll be spoiler-free but I'll just say about his character that he seems to be trying to avoid what a more ruthless type of professional would do in five seconds, so you can't bring yourself to be totally against him. WARNING, though: this is (just barely) on the ROUGH neo-noir side of entertainment, and there's a sexually-threatening edge to the the first half. Which would be absolutely the case if a situation played out like this in real life. So don't expect to be totally undisturbed by the experience. Finally, some advice: Keaton's "The Merry Gentleman" IS, in my opinion, an unappreciated masterpiece of the genre, so check it out.

I haven't seen the whole film BUT...

I saw David Warner a few years back talking to a bunch of people and he ABSOLUTELY REFUSED- very strongly!- to talk about THE ISLAND!

Does anybody know what went wrong on this film? I wonder what Michael Caine thinks about it?

I saw about five minutes on TV once and it looked somewhere between awful (considering the talents involved) or intentionally humorous + engagingly bizarre.

I've always thought that Michael Ritchie was a criminally underrated director of comedies that were both unique and reliably funny (Survivors, Couch Trip). He seemed to have a track record for working well with great actors. Again, what went wrong?

-Dr. Paybaragon