A Package of Spare Parts

The Island

the  New York Sun, July 22, 2005

As we all know from the movies, if you're going to clone something, clone something worthwhile: So, for example, don't clone dangerous dinosaurs, and don't clone Adolf Hitler. That's good advice. Unfortunately, Michael Bay, the director of "The Island," hasn't taken it. His new film may not exactly be a clone, but it certainly appears to have borrowed (there's some controversy about this) its central conceit from "Parts: The Clonus Horror," a low-budget, high concept fiasco from 1979 best known these days as a victim of the sarcastic nerds at "Mystery Science Theater 3000." That's a shame. An intelligent film about clones and cloning is long overdue. "The Island" is not it.

What we get instead are parts, so to speak, of "Clonus" minus the Herb Tarlek jackets and pleasantly gratuitous nudity, together with a fairly standard futuristic fleeing couple drama with more than a touch of "Logan's Run" about it, all wrapped up in the flash, dash and pizzazz of a film by Michael Bay, the creator of "Armageddon," "Pearl Harbor," and "The Rock." But while "Clonus" had a desperate, ramshackle charm, "The Island" is too commercial and too slickly packaged for that, something that is only reinforced by shameless product placement, intrusive even by the debased standards of contemporary Hollywood.

It's difficult to say too much about "The Island's" plot without giving the game away, but, for all the film's many faults, there's no doubt that Mr. Bay knows how to put together an entertaining summer movie (full disclosure: I enjoyed "Armageddon"). From the hallucinatory opening sequences, to the virtuoso fast cutting, to the rococo chases and baroque gunplay, to the feeble, and usually unsuccessful, lapses into humor, this is classic Bay, as evanescent, entertaining, and dumb as a day at the beach.

Oh yes, Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson do their best to portray the runaway clones, and Steve Buscemi is convincing as a louse with a heart of gold, but it's not the actors that count in a movie like this.