Is it weird that the movie that convinced me Scarlett Johansson is a really good actor is The Island? It’s a terrible movie, which is precisely what you’d expect from a Michael Bay remake of Parts: The Clonus Horror. And it isn’t like I haven’t enjoyed Johansson’s performances before in much better movies.
But she’s just so damned funny in The Island – intentionally funny, but logically so within Bay’s moronic framework. She seems to have hit that precise sweet spot where a fine and talented actor does something exactly right with really, really bad material.
Up until now, I’ve been led to believe her skill set ran exactly as far as sulking beautifully and with meaning. Now I know she’s capable of keen, satirical comedy, so capable that she can pull it off probably without the director’s knowledge or consent. I want to see her in a Christopher Guest movie, riffing with Parker Posey.
I do find myself trying to picture her reaction when her agent described the part to her. “You’ll be playing the clone of a supermodel.” Pause. “For Michael Bay.” I’m guessing such a moment would leave you with two choices: laugh or cry. I’m glad she laughed.
She’s pretty much all that The Island has going for it, and the movie makes me wonder why contemporary directors are so fond of remaking wonderfully terrible movies that can’t really be improved. There’s a Poseidon Adventure remake in production (just Poseidon now, which fills me with the direst of suspicions), and seriously, there is not a more perfect, unintentionally stupid movie than the original.
The thought of someone trying to turn that kind of material into something genuinely exciting and tense is just depressing. And without the kind of B-list actresses that the 1970s seemed to produce in such wonderful quantities (Stella Stevens, Pamela Sue Martin, Carol Lynley) to liven things up, the prospects become even direr. (The only contemporary actress I can think of that has something of the same quality of a Martin or a Lynley is Milla Jovovich, and she isn’t in Poseidon. Fools!)