![](https://jmunney.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/fantasy-island_lucy-hale_austin-stowell_michael-pena.jpg?w=500&h=298)
CREDIT: Columbia/Sony Pictures
Starring: Michael Peña, Maggie Q, Lucy Hale, Austin Stowell, Portia Doubleday, Jimmy O. Yang, Ryan Hansen, Michael Rooker, Parisa Fitz-Henley
Director: Jeff Wadlow
Running Time: 110 Minutes
Rating: PG-13 for A Few Stabbings, a Little Bit of Gunfire, One F-Bomb
Release Date: February 14, 2020
Fantasy Island is the most unapologetically nuts movie I’ve seen in quite a while, and … I kinda loved it. It’s ostensibly based on the late 70s/early 80s TV show of the same name, which had one of those “exactly what it says on the tin” premises. Each episode, guests would arrive on an island where, for a price, they would be allowed to live out a fantasy of theirs. I have never seen an episode in its entirety, but based on clips I’ve seen, the film, which scooches the “be careful what you wish for” setup into full-on horror, feels like a very liberal adaptation. Or at least, it must be, right? Somebody surely would have told me at some point during my thirty-plus years on this Earth if the show were this unhinged. Because what we’ve got in theaters now feels like the result of an all-night bender in which some folks were like, “Hey, remember that weirdly iconic high-concept show from a few decades ago? What if it were a little more … twisted?”
Michael Peña takes over for Ricardo Montalbán as Mr. Roarke, the island’s proprietor who guides the guests through their fantasies. He welcomes a quintet of thrill-seekers: the relatively nondescript trio of Melanie (Lucy Hale), Gwen (Maggie Q), and Patrick (Austin Stowell) as well as fratty stepbrothers Brax (Ryan Hansen) and JD (Jimmy O. Yang). The latter’s fantasy is simultaneously the most enjoyable and the most stereotypically indulgent. All they want to do is lounge around by the pool with a bunch of hot babes and studs as they yell out party-hearty bromides like “Fantasy Fricking Island!” It’s so cranked up to 11 that it feels like self-parody except for the fact that Hansen and Yang are comedy vets who know how to calibrate that over-the-topness just so. This is a very silly movie.
As for the others, Melanie wants revenge on an old bully from school (Portia Doubleday), Patrick wants to live up to the example of his hero soldier father, and Gwen wants a re-do with an ex-boyfriend who proposed to her. They all assume that their experiences are something like highly sophisticated virtual reality or live-action role-playing (despite Roarke’s insistence on the legitimacy of it all), so they roll with it when dead loved ones and other impossibilities start popping up. With the just-too-perfect nature of everything, it’s clear that we’ll eventually get an explanation of how Roarke is really pulling it off. You might have a sneaking suspicion that that explanation will be deeply stupid, but (for me at least) that’s part of the fun.
So here’s the deal: if your favorite part of Lost was all the mystical mumbo-jumbo about how the island itself was basically sentient and wish that that formula could be applied to any media that takes place on a remote tropical island, then Fantasy Island is definitely for you. If you would also like a hundred twists that gradually make less and less sense piled on top of each other, you need to go see a psychologist immediately, but also, this movie is for you, and also also, you and I are kindred spirits and we should be friends. Writer-director Jeff Wadlow, I don’t know what you ingested or what exists within the core of your soul that led you to take us on this journey, but whatever it is, I salute you!
Fantasy Island is Recommended If You Like: The most fantastical elements of Lost crossed with the glossiness of modern horror and a dash of the sadism of Saw, all mixed up in a cocaine-fueled blender
Grade: 3 out of 5 Regrets