We haven’t had a bad movie on here in a long time, and in this case I mean bad. I don’t know how 2004’s Miss Castaway And the Island Girls came up in my Tubi feed, but there it was, and even though I could tell it was awful, I was strangely intrigued by Michael Jackson’s disembodied head in the thumbnail. Who wouldn’t be, right?
It has a plot. Several, actually. All is heralded by a text crawl claiming the movie only cost the price of a used car to make, using a five hundred dollar camera bought at a garage sale. Errrr, OK. What kind of used car are we talking about and what brand is the camera? Camry, Chrysler or Mercedes? Samsung, Canon or Toshiba? Also, there were no widescreen home movie cameras in 2004. If this thing was shot on a home video camera. which I doubt.
The movie opens with an interview with the director’s mom, who holds up what she calls her son’s latest venture…Filmmaking For Dummies. Off camera, we can hear this woman’s darling boy asking her to make him a sandwich. Really?
We also see an expedition through a jungle somewhere, where the group happens on Noah’s Ark. The leader picks up a rotary phone and calls Austin Powers, who says, “Oh, beehive!” while pointing to a woman’s pink wig, and then we head to the Vatican, where the Pope (Eugene Greytak) takes a delivery from a guy who sneezes.
Then we go to an airport, where a bevy of the Miss Universe beauty pageant contestants are boarding a plane. The captain of the plane, Maximus Powers (Eric Roberts), exits the cab with half a dozen stewardesses on his arms, and they stride into the airport. Hmmmm. Kinda like Frank Abergnale did in Catch Me If You Can, only Max and his ladies form a kickline.
The ladies are all types, and none are more obvious than Miss Congenial (Jackie Torres), who trips over her heels in every other scene. She’s not the only one, though–the other ladies constantly trip, too. Why? Why? We don’t have time to find out, though, because we’re too busy gawking at the very stereotypical Miss Canada (Janna Giacoppo), who speaks in Canadian cliches, Miss Nebraska (, who sees dead people, and Miss California (Gabrielle) gawking at Miss Washington (Amber E.) as she eats first-class worthy shrimp cocktail and lobster in coach.
There’s also a reporter on board, and he’s supremely smarmy. He’ll pop up now and then, always with his mic in hand. It’s hard to care. In fact, when he gets eaten by a giant monster known as Jurassic Pork later, it’s almost a relief.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, and I honestly don’t care if I spoil anything.
Long story short, one of the flight attendants, who looks like a cross between Patrick Bateman and Gavin Newsom, is actually an undercover spy. He jumps overboard with a fellow spy, who’s dressed like Britney Spears in the “Oops, I Did It Again” video. Meanwhile, the plane crashes into a Federalli Espresso cargo plane and then crashes into the badly rendered CGI ocean. Miraculously, pilots, crew, and passengers all wash up dry on the beach, no one’s hair is mussed, everyone’s clothes are intact, everyone’s makeup is perfect, and their cell phones work.
No one seems too concerned, though. There’s a lot of trekking through the jungle and dinging around, not to mention it’s like Survivor, only without the tribal councils. The group also finds a giant egg, which they somehow are able to crack and turn into scrambled eggs with a nice, new T-Fal skillet they mysteriously find.
Meanwhile, Max’s co-pilot, Mike (Charles Schlatter) is living large in a cave with a fully-stocked mini-fridge, a laptop, and various other man cave accoutrements, including, inexplicably, electricity and wifi. He does, however, bring a box of new swimsuits out for the ladies. What a guy.
From there, it just gets even messier, involving the Ark, Noah (Stuart Pankin) (who just wants to open a bagel shop), the apes from Planet of the Apes, Max and Mike doing a Men In Black parody with Nerf guns, a dodo, a romance between Mike and flight attendant Julie (Joyce Giraud), and oh yeah, Jurassic Pork, who isn’t too happy that the castaways have eaten her egg.
Oh, and Michael Jackson, who’s known as Agent MJ, does appear, but only for about five minutes, and only from the shoulders up. One of the ladies asks him if he can teach her to moonwalk, but Agent MJ doesn’t answer. The lady looks gypped, and Michael Jackson fans will probably feel the same way.
Naturally, when the ending credits finally rolled on this movie, if it can be called a movie, my first response was, “What the heck was that?”
Also naturally, the reviews haven’t been kind. At all. And how much was Michael Jackson paid for his little Great and Powerful Oz cameo? It had to be more than the price of a used car, or someone must have called in a big favor. The questions will hang in Bad Movie air for as long as there are movies.
Yeah, there are some cute parts. A few. The whole thing swims in camp and knee-slappers. When the ladies try to carve out the word, “Help,” on the beach so as to attract a passing plane, it looks like, “HEPL.” The pilots who do fly over shrug and move on, as if the sight of a lot of bikini-clad women on a supposedly deserted island isn’t intriguing enough. The guy who plays the Pope does pretty fair impressions of Pope John Paul II and Humma Kavula.
That said, there are so many parodies and callbacks and subplots that there’s nothing to latch onto, plotwise. Sure, we don’t really expect much with a movie like this, but it would be nice to remember something after it’s all said and done. I’ve watched the movie twice on its own, and even for this review I keep having to play it back just to remember the basics.
What’s really funny is that in the text crawl at the beginning, the filmmakers literally say, “Please try to enjoy this movie.”
Who else isn’t sure how to take that? It feels like begging in my opinion. While I guess it’s possible to somewhat enjoy Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls, the key seems to be to abandon all hope of anything remotely logical or coherent.
Go home, movie. You’re drunk.
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All right, another post is coming out on Thursday. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you then…
Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls is available to own on DVD from Amazon. It is also free to stream on Tubi.
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