#54 Miss Cast Away (2004) (Colin)

It's fair to say that comedy movies on our list, so far, are about as funny as watching Miranda. I'd rather smash my testicles with a claw hammer and insert 6 inch rusty nails, than to watch 1 second of that pathetic sitcom. So when I saw that our next movie was another comedy, my heart sank.

It does, however, star 2 Hollywood giants: Eric Roberts and Charlie Schlatter.

Eric Roberts is the brother of Julia Roberts and, according to IMDb, currently has 374 acting credits to his name. He has starred in cinematic greats such as The Dark Knight, Expendables and off course, Sharktopus. He has played The Master in The Doctor Who 'Movie', (actually it was a pilot for a new series rather than a movie and it was only crap because they decided to focus on car chases, explosions and a love story, rather than plot, wobbly sets and baddies made from sink plungers.). More impressively, Roberts is also an Oscar nominee.

Charlie Schlatter, was in Diagnosis: Murder.

The movie also has a cameo from Michael Jackson who is a terrific actor and I particularly enjoyed him in ‘The Oprah Winfrey Interview’ and the sequel,‘The Martin Bashir Interview’ in which he gives a masterclass in acting. It’s a shame he didn’t use any of these skills in ‘Moonwalker’, but it was a great MegaDrive, (Genesis, for our US readers), game, so I’ll forgive him for that.

Anyway, with a sense of dread and a feeling of déjà vu, we watched yet another ‘comedy’movie from our list.

Apes, who look suspiciously like the Apes from The Planet of the Apes, have managed to persuade Noah to rebuild his ark, (those damn dirty apes!). If successful, once the Ark is launched then the world will once again flood, wiping out humanity and allowing the Apes to take over the planet and all the spare tyres with little fuss.

I would say that it’s hard to imagine a planet ruled by animals who fling their own poo at strangers, but I'm from Essex so………..

Meanwhile, Pilot Maximus Powers, (Eric Roberts) and Co-Pilot Mike Saunders, (Charlie Schlatter), are flying a bunch of beauty queens to the annual Miss Galaxy Pageant in Japan. All is going well until the ground throws itself at the plane and they crash land on a deserted island. By a miracle a) they all survive b) they happen to land on the island in which the top secret ark is being built and c) I’ve not managed to fall asleep yet.

Whilst chasing a pig, (you can do your own jokes about which beauty queen that is, but as a feminist, I'm not going there!), Max stumbles onto a much bigger prehistoric pig called Jurassic Pork, (and with puns this good, you know you are watching a quality movie), and also the ark.

Mike, meanwhile, has been filled in by Michael Jackson. Or rather, I should say, Mike has also become aware of the ark after receiving a holographic message from a robot in a scene pinched similar to Star Wars. Instead of Princess Leah, however, we have the projected image of Michael Jackson, aka agent MJ, (a poor parody of his agent M in Men in Black II, in which the film itself was a poor parody of Men in Black).

Agent MJ warns Mike about the Ape's plans, but it is only when love interest Julie, (Joyce Giraud), is kidnapped that Mike decides to leap into action, (I say leap, to be honest there is more life in a geranium).

Whilst all this is going on, Austin Powers, (not Mike Myers, but an impressionist, (not Monet or Renoir)) alerts George Bush, (not George Bush, but an impressionist, (not Davro or Bremner)), who decides to launch a nuke on the island.

Will Mike rescue Julie? Can the nuke be stopped? Will the writers ever create a joke which is half funny? Who knows and frankly, who cares?

I don't, that's for sure, but I did watch the end and let's just say it's tinged with sadness for me as the apes didn't manage to drown this sorry excuse for a comedy movie.

It is becoming more and more difficult to originally describe why a comedy movie is not funny from our list. I could probably just cut and paste my review for 'Meet The Spartans' (Click here if you'd like to read it) and it would be pretty near the mark!

Like 'Meet The Spartans', the writers desperately want you to know that they are aware of pop culture and that they have seen movies such as Fly With Me, Miss Congeniality, Green Mile, Sixth Sense, The Matrix, Planet of the Apes and so on. Reference after reference is thrown at us which leads to a disjointed feel and far more gags which fall flat rather than hit the mark.

Also like‘Meet The Spartans’, it tries hard to follow in the footsteps of Airplane!, but again, it fails spectacularly. This is because Airplane was innovative, original and above all, clever and Miss Cast Away is none of these. It is very lazy and thinks the mere mention of another movie they are parodying is enough to get us laughing. It isn’t.

I can not actually think of one single incident which did make me laugh, (although the end credits made me smile as I knew the pain was about to end); So why is this? Simple really, lack of comedy actors, comedy script and comedy full stop.

Schlatter is not a comedy actor or at least on the basis of this movie, he isn’t. He does not have the comic timing, range or skills to pass off these lame gags. In all, Roberts, the appallingly bad actresses who play the beauty queens, the shockingly bad CGI for Jurassic Pork, the bad impressions of famous people, the nails used in the ark, the sand, the font used in the credits; these are all funnier than Schlatter.

This is obviously a problem as he is also the lead actor and has the most screen time. The fact is he was working with a threadbare script written in crayon by an imbecile is not an excuse, but probably didn’t help.

And so yet again I must report that a comedy movie on our list contains no comedy whatsoever. This should not be a surprise by now as it happens so often and also because this is a top 100 bad movies list; If it were funny, it wouldn’t be here, (in theory).

Actually though, maybe I am being a bit harsh as there is one funny thing about the movie; until now I thought that being trapped on a sun drenched deserted island with no-one for company but a ton of scantily clad beauty queens would be make me smile, as it turns out, I was wrong……