Must be I've never needed a cave.
It seems to be a movie and television standard, that when you are in dire need of a nice, cozy cave, you *will* find one.
I've never found a cave. And believe me, I've looked. I keep hoping that this is the year, THIS is the year, that I find a cave.
Tom Hanks found a cave, and boy did he need it.
In the wake of the success of television's "Survivors" that we have all grown to know and love and ultimately forget like yesterday's news, the movie industry has jumped on the bandwagon with it's own SURVIVOR story, the story of Tom Hanks and his quest to survive alone as a sole CASTAWAY on a little island in the middle of nowhere.
The plot is a simple one. Tom watch clock. Tom run to beat clock. Tom board plane. Plane go splash. Tom wash ashore. Tom learn to survive alone. Tom grow hair. Tom have plenty time to think.
And grow *more* hair.
Tom Hanks alone and trying to get by on the island is the real "meat" of the movie. There is a before story and an after story featuring Helen "great butt" Hunt and the rest of Tom's character's life, but it's Tom alone on the island that really captivates us.
So, Tom's plane goes down and he has to fend for himself for a few odd years on a tiny little island featuring a handfull of trees, a rocky summit, and a nifty cave (did I mention Tom finds a cave!?!). Since it's a FedEx plane that goes down, naturally many FedEx packages wash up on the shore. For some reason, Tom waits a long time before opening them, which had me screaming in my head like a member of the "Let's make a deal" studio audience. "OPEN THE BOX! OPEN THE BOX!", I screamed mentally for only me and the other voices in my head to hear. I knew, I just KNEW, that after starving for a year and living on sand crabs, coconut milk and dirt, that he'd open up one of those packages and discover a fully stocked Hickory Farms gift pack.
Alas, there was no Hickory Farms pack.
But he eventually opens the packages and discovers some pretty cool, though hardly edible (not even in a pinch), stuff.
A really hideous party dress.
Ladies figure skates.
A volleyball.
As the items he opened got more and more useless, I truly expected at least one of them to contain a Backstreet Boys CD. But maybe that would have been more than our tanned and sand covered hero's already fragile mind could have taken. No, that would have been too much. Facing adversity is one thing, but that's just cruel.
So Tom makes the best of what washes up, including a dead guy named Albert. To pass the time he spends alot of the movie talking to, fighting with, and rescuing from certain peril, a volleyball. Imagine that. Alone on an island with a volleyball and no Gabrielle Reese to show you how to use it. Talk about bad luck.
Another thing Castaway shows us is that it can be fun to watch fat people lose weight. Tom Hanks starts out the movie with love handles the size of the Firestone Tire recall pile, and by the end of the movie he is toned, tanned, and enjoying a new lifestyle as a blonde. Watching Tom lose weight for 2 hours is much more entertaining than that annoying 30 second "Subway" ad featuring Jarod, that guy who lost 700 or whatever pounds by eating out of the trash at Subway.
From start to finish we see Hanks' character change in many ways, aside from the obvious loss of paunch and gain of Fabio-like tresses. By the end of the movie he has learned much about life, and the movie has taught us (at least those of us who were paying attention and not dicking around with popcorn boxes and cell phones anyway) a thing or three about life. I for one felt the end of the movie was very powerful in it's subtlety and simplicity. It shows us that if we make the best of life when times get tough, we will eventually find ourselves at a crossroads in life where each direction holds promise.
But FIRST you must find a CAVE! I can't stress that enough!
CAST AWAY is a heck of a good movie, plain and simple. Directed by Robert "Back to the Future" Zemeckis, it takes you on an incredible journey that will make you laugh, make you cry, and most of all make you wonder if you could be like Tom hanks and survive alone in the Pacific Ocean on an island the size of a Burger King parking lot.
I think I could do it, and do it *happily*... provided I had a cool cave. I mean........ c'mon, even the Brady Bunch kids found a cave when they went to Hawaii.
Life isn't fair.
Until next time, the balcony is condemned.
Dr. Torgo