Unbelievable

Rating: 6/10 (21 May 2007)

Not to be confused with the movie "Castaway" 1986 - from the autobiographical book by Lucy Irvine about her 12 month contract with Gerald Kingsland to live with him on a deserted Pacific island.
** Spoilers herein **
Tom Hanks gives a laudable performance - especially as he made the effort to gain and lose a vast amount of weight to give a more accurate representation of his physical condition. However, the tooth extraction scene left me chuckling. The way he did it would have broken his jaw and he would probably have died from starvation as a consequence.
My main issue is with the character of Kelly - the fiancée. The time-line is that he disappeared for four years and upon his return finds her married to a smooth-talking, good-looking dentist with an infant of at least 6 months old to boot (you don't use a car seat for babies younger than that). Let's do some math. Fedex is a huge corporation - let's assume they would have continued search protocols for their Corporate Executive for at least 3 months after the crash (check out the extensive search patterns on Kelly's map). No one can be officially declared dead until 12 months after the date of their disappearance - and sometimes later. This would be when Kelly's family might start pressuring her to accept the fact that Chuck is never coming back and they would have held the memorial service. How soon would any woman who declares that "You're the love of my life" and "I always knew you were alive" submit to the advances of another man? Adding it all up, I calculate that the maximum time span Kelly waited before getting married was a mere 18 months (or thereabouts). Just how fickle is this woman? How soon would you get over the loss of the Love of Your Life - let alone marry on the rebound and have a kid? Check out the maps she has kept *on hand* in her kitchen. She kept the vehicle. She obviously still loved him. This is a jarring credibility error in the script and unfortunately ruined the whole movie for me. Now, if she had been recently married and several months pregnant - that would have been slightly more believable.
Up to that point I quite enjoyed the story - especially the food humour at his company's Welcome Home party. How thoughtless of the organizers to provide mounds of seafood (and so much of it is casually left behind) after he had almost starved on a tiny, deserted Pacific island.