The Island

"Cartman gets his own amusement park, and Michael Bay gets to keep making movies. It's true. There is no God." - South Park

Since my new mom works for Time-Warner Cable, I've been lucky enough to have access to tons of movie channels, with the added bonus of HBO On-Demand, Showtime On-Demand, and Starz On-Demand. All together, I probably have access to over a hundred movies at any given time, which translates into about six movies worth watching. Since I have nothing to do on weekends, I've already watched most of the good movies like The Machinist, Crash, Batman Begins, Life Aquatic, Cinderella Man, etc... so now I'm working my way through the not so good movies- like The Island.
First, let me preface this by saying that The Island was not a disappointment. In fact, it probably was much better than I expected considering the fact that it's a Michael Bay movie, meaning that I expected less than nothing. Why do I hate Michael Bay movies? I'm not sure if I can explain it, but I'll show you. Here is what would happen if Michael Bay directed my life:

Normal Day: I get up at 5:15am (yeah, gross, I know), eat breakfast, drive to work, work, drive home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to sleep.

If Michael Bay directed my life: I wake up to my alarm clock blowing up. I eat breakfast, the camera zooms into my face as I try to look really serious, my spoon blows up. I run outside to my truck, dodging bullets from some motorcycle gangs having a shootout with assault rifles on the street. The camera prominantly displays the brand of my truck, the insignia on my shoes, and my exposed underwear band with the letters "FTL". My underwear band blows up. I drive to work, swerving from lane to lane as boats/cars/giant iron dumbells are being rolled off the trailer in front of me. I dodge them, but the other cars don't, and crash spectacularly, flipping over repeatedly, flying through the air, and coming to rest in slow-motion as smoking heaps of metal. My I-Pod (the camera zooms in to make sure you see the Apple logo) seems to be filled with techno filmscore music, which builds in intensity as the drive to work progresses. Finally, I throw it out the window at the helicopter firing rockets at me, they both explode. I walk into work, and start making out with our hot secretary. She offers to do the scene topless, but Michael Bay won't let her, I walk to my desk, she blows up in the background.

Understand? Good. Now, a few specific issues I have with The Island.

• Why do clones get $80 sneakers? Seems like the facility could save a lot of money with generic sneakers, and the clones wouldn't know the difference.
  
• Why did they put in the scene where they talk about how he has memory? That doesn't explain why Lincoln Six Echo questions his surroundings, or the meaning of his life. That's a fairly standard human trait. The better question is- why don't the others do the same thing?
• How do the clones go from absolute zero in terms of sexuality to being professionals in the span of two minutes? I know at least from a male perspective that you can't just get there without going through the whole awkward erection at a high school dance phase (Do I back up? or just trap it up against her?). This was probably the worst scene of the whole movie, probably because I kept thinking, "Wow, she's going to be really disappointed about thirty seconds from now."
• There was absolutely no need for the redemption of the guy from Gladiator. He could have just grabbed his money, walked out of the movie, and it still could have ended the same. Michael Bay- stop trying to force emotional depth in your movies! You aren't John Woo!