A wealthy couple are yachting in the Caribbean when their yacht catches fire. The couple and their crew abandon ship and the wife, Jennifer, a glamorous trophy wife much younger than her husband, ends up on a deserted island with Manuel, a handsome young crewman. Jennifer quickly realises that she needs the young man's help to find food and survive.
I imagine that I am not the only viewer to assume that "Survival Island" would turn out to be a remake of "Swept Away", only a couple of years after the event. And why would anyone want to remake "Swept Away", one of the worst movies of the 21st century and the film responsible for sweeping away the acting career of its leading lady, Madonna? Well, "Survival Island" does have a twist not found in "Swept Away", a twist indicated by its alternative title, "Three". Jennifer's husband Jack has also survived, and washes up on the island two days later. Jack is at first grateful to Manuel, who has helped to rescue him, but his gratitude later gives way to jealousy as he begins to suspect that a romantic attachment is growing up between Jennifer and Manuel, who is younger and better looking than Jack.
Perhaps the film should have been titled "Four", because Manuel also has a girlfriend, Maria. Admittedly, she was not on the yacht and does not end up on the island, but we see her back on the mainland doing a sort of voodoo dance, trying to put a curse on Manuel, whom she clearly suspects of being unfaithful to him.
So is the film as bad as "Swept Away"? Well, not quite. Very few films are as bad as "Swept Away", which suffers from bad directing, harsh, glaring lighting, a leading man unable to speak English and the worst performance of Madonna's career. (Worse than "Body of Evidence", which is saying something). Little wonder that it swept the board at the 2002 Golden Raspberry Awards, including (inter alia) "Worst Picture", "Worst Actress" for Madge and "Worst Director" for her then husband Guy Ritchie. (The film's male lead, Adriano Giannini, unaccountably missed out on "Worst Actor")."Survival Island", by comparison, did not receive a single Razzie nomination.
In terms of plot, "Survival Island" is as bad as the earlier film, or very nearly so. The "Maria" storyline is particularly bizarre, and for me it became even more so when I discovered that Manuel and Maria are played by brother and sister, Juan Pablo and Maria Victoria Di Pace. The initial sexual encounter between Jennifer and Manuel, like that between the characters played by Madonna and Giannini, seems to start off as rape and then turn into consensual sex. You don't have to be a feminist to find that tasteless and offensive. There were some other weird developments, such as the scene where Jack finds a boat and leaves it lying about for Jennifer and Manuel to steal, hoping that they will drown having failed to notice a hole in the bottom.
In terms of acting, however, "Survival Island" would appear to have the advantage, if only in the sense that the terminally mediocre is better than the screamingly awful. Its equivalent of the Material Girl is the Cindy Crawford lookalike Kelly Brook, one of Britain's leading all-round celebrities of the noughties, part-time actress, part-time television personality and part-time lads-mag model. I had always imagined that Kelly had drifted into acting when some producer caught sight of her voluptuous curves in the pages of a lads-mag, but in fact she was originally destined for an acting career, studying at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in London before drifting into modelling after winning a beauty contest. Here she does not really look like an alumna of so prestigious a stage school, but at least she learned enough there to avoid giving an exhibition of Bad Acting like the one given by Madonna in "Swept Away".
Similarly, Juan Pablo Di Pace as Manuel is rather forgettable, but at least a forgettable performance is better than Giannini's, which was memorable for all the wrong reasons. The best acting comes from Billy Zane, who does at least look as though he knows what he is doing. Zane and Brook fell in love while making the movie and later got engaged, but this does not seem to have affected his acting. (It may have affected hers; I never sensed that Jennifer hated Jack as much as he hated her).
So I think we can conclude that "Survival island" is not the worst ever "castaways on a desert island" film. I would, however, find it difficult to acquit it of the charge of being the second-worst. 3/10- appropriately enough in view of its alternative title.
I imagine that I am not the only viewer to assume that "Survival Island" would turn out to be a remake of "Swept Away", only a couple of years after the event. And why would anyone want to remake "Swept Away", one of the worst movies of the 21st century and the film responsible for sweeping away the acting career of its leading lady, Madonna? Well, "Survival Island" does have a twist not found in "Swept Away", a twist indicated by its alternative title, "Three". Jennifer's husband Jack has also survived, and washes up on the island two days later. Jack is at first grateful to Manuel, who has helped to rescue him, but his gratitude later gives way to jealousy as he begins to suspect that a romantic attachment is growing up between Jennifer and Manuel, who is younger and better looking than Jack.
Perhaps the film should have been titled "Four", because Manuel also has a girlfriend, Maria. Admittedly, she was not on the yacht and does not end up on the island, but we see her back on the mainland doing a sort of voodoo dance, trying to put a curse on Manuel, whom she clearly suspects of being unfaithful to him.
So is the film as bad as "Swept Away"? Well, not quite. Very few films are as bad as "Swept Away", which suffers from bad directing, harsh, glaring lighting, a leading man unable to speak English and the worst performance of Madonna's career. (Worse than "Body of Evidence", which is saying something). Little wonder that it swept the board at the 2002 Golden Raspberry Awards, including (inter alia) "Worst Picture", "Worst Actress" for Madge and "Worst Director" for her then husband Guy Ritchie. (The film's male lead, Adriano Giannini, unaccountably missed out on "Worst Actor")."Survival Island", by comparison, did not receive a single Razzie nomination.
In terms of plot, "Survival Island" is as bad as the earlier film, or very nearly so. The "Maria" storyline is particularly bizarre, and for me it became even more so when I discovered that Manuel and Maria are played by brother and sister, Juan Pablo and Maria Victoria Di Pace. The initial sexual encounter between Jennifer and Manuel, like that between the characters played by Madonna and Giannini, seems to start off as rape and then turn into consensual sex. You don't have to be a feminist to find that tasteless and offensive. There were some other weird developments, such as the scene where Jack finds a boat and leaves it lying about for Jennifer and Manuel to steal, hoping that they will drown having failed to notice a hole in the bottom.
In terms of acting, however, "Survival Island" would appear to have the advantage, if only in the sense that the terminally mediocre is better than the screamingly awful. Its equivalent of the Material Girl is the Cindy Crawford lookalike Kelly Brook, one of Britain's leading all-round celebrities of the noughties, part-time actress, part-time television personality and part-time lads-mag model. I had always imagined that Kelly had drifted into acting when some producer caught sight of her voluptuous curves in the pages of a lads-mag, but in fact she was originally destined for an acting career, studying at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in London before drifting into modelling after winning a beauty contest. Here she does not really look like an alumna of so prestigious a stage school, but at least she learned enough there to avoid giving an exhibition of Bad Acting like the one given by Madonna in "Swept Away".
Similarly, Juan Pablo Di Pace as Manuel is rather forgettable, but at least a forgettable performance is better than Giannini's, which was memorable for all the wrong reasons. The best acting comes from Billy Zane, who does at least look as though he knows what he is doing. Zane and Brook fell in love while making the movie and later got engaged, but this does not seem to have affected his acting. (It may have affected hers; I never sensed that Jennifer hated Jack as much as he hated her).
So I think we can conclude that "Survival island" is not the worst ever "castaways on a desert island" film. I would, however, find it difficult to acquit it of the charge of being the second-worst. 3/10- appropriately enough in view of its alternative title.