Are there two Cast Away Movies ?

Rating: 2/10 (29 December 2000)

Either I have lost my mind or there are two movies called Cast Away and the people who gave it 8 stars saw the other one; or they have lost their minds.
Explain to me someone, please, how it is that an Oscar winning actor gets involved in a mess of a movie like this one ? Was it for the money ? As virtually the only actor in it, did he get the entire acting purse of 3 trillion dollars and a promise of all the cream filled donuts he could eat for life ? Otherwise, surely he would rather have died in the plane crash early on - the only good moment: Perfect Storm meets Airplane 17 - than appear in the credits of yet one more movie written and produced by People Who Have Had Their Brains Removed, or Lost Them on the Cutting Room Floor.
Hanks is a great actor, but there is a limit to how long you can watch even him rub sticks together to make fire or talk to a volleyball. Through a deadly awkward sub title we are informed that Hanks's character apparently did this for four years ; it certainly felt a good deal longer. But matters worsened when he returned to the enthralling offices of Fedex and engaged in conversations which proved that if you dedicate your life to getting parcels there on time you cause yourself severe cerebral damage.
His best friend's wife has died of cancer. Hanks says `I should have been there, I am sorry, I should have been there'. He doesn't go on to say, Indeed I would have been there if I my plane hadn't crashed in the Pacific Ocean. His friend could at least have said, don't worry ,Tom, I understand why you didn't make it. SPOILERS AHEAD Hanks returns and his beloved's new husband meets him and says ,"Hi remember me I once gave you root canal treatment." This must go down as one of the all time greats alongside Hamlet saying to Laertes in Act Five " Hi, remember me ? I once resprayed the side panels of your Dodge Durango"; or Jesus to Barabas: "Hi, remember me ? Each of these nails they're putting in was hand turned on a lathe and coated with an environmentally friendly anti-oxidant." Or maybe the implication was "but that's nothing to what I'm going to do to you now."
He meets his beloved and she a) makes him a coffee, b) tells him she has a big mortgage, or her husband has a big mortgage, or a big something else which is why she fell for him (he is after all Mr Big from Sex in a Cargo Plane) and then cheers up the hopelessly depressed Hanks ( the dime had dropped as to the movie he had gotten himself into ) by telling him she hung on to his car after he died and, look , here it is. At this Hanks forgets about falling forty thousand feet into the ocean and spending the best years of his life communing with stones and becomes as happy as any Walmart shopper stumbling across a bargain.
I have to admit that was the moment when I expected the oxygen masks to fall from the ceiling and save us & when they didn't I had to make a break for the air outside.
So I don't know what happened at the very end. But there could be no miracle great enough to redeem this cynical movie. Hanks had better be careful what kind of project he attaches himself to next: brand names degrade with misuse, faster than Fedex.