[Ghoulish Delight]

Returning to ancient history...So we saw Castaway last night.

I'll give it "not bad", with some problems. Overall, I enjoyed it. I didn't find it to be cinematic brilliance, though it contained some small nuggets of brilliance. The plane going down was fantabulous. A lot of the island stuff was cool.

Spoiler:

But, I had a hard time forgiving the fact that he walked away from that crash completely unscathed. Not even a freaking limp?! Worse than that, they not only had him unhurt, they showed him willfully dodging flying debris in the cabin as the plane slammed into the water at 400 miles per hour. I mean, go ahead and have the boat inflate accidentally, coushoing him on impact, and having one of the shipping crates wedge in a way that protectd him from debris. But just kinda dodging out of the way? Totally out of the scale of believability of the rest of the film. And at least give him SOME injury. Sprained ankle, hurt wrist. Something.

And I know it's nitpicky, but I felt beaten over the head with the hanging thing. I mean, I got the picture when he dragged the log up and it had a noose tied. Instantly obvious what happened...there was zero need for the following expository conversation with Wilson. Anything that might have been unclear would have been resolved by the conversation at the end where he retells the hanging story to his friend. As a matter of fact, I felt the impact of that scene was completely lost as it was now the 3rd time we as an audience were being told the story (once visually, twice verbally).

Other than that, I enjoyed the time on the island, save a minor nit here and there. But I'm in the GC camp when it comes to the story wrapper. I did not buy their relationship at all. Don't know what it was, but it just had zero substance. No sense of what made their relationship tick.

And of course, I now have to weigh in on the FedEx thing. Eh, could have done without it. I can't say it affected me as much as it did GC, but I don't think the movie needed it...and the opening sequence was totally a FedEx commercial. It was filmed in the exact style of one of their commercials, following that path of delivery of a package. That bugged a little, but it faded for me as the movie went. But the fact that it was FedEx, vs. any other global shipping company added nothing for me.