MOVIE REVIEW
TYBEE BEACHCOMBER | JULY 2020 35
By Hollie Sessoms
The Art of Social Distancing
As an introvert, I am an expert on social distancing. I’ve been practicing
social distancing since my very first playdate. So when the CDC came out
and said we all, as a society, had to remain six feet away from each other, I
turned my ball cap backwards, marked my face with war paint, cracked my
knuckles and announced: Game On (very quietly and only to myself).
Here are some social distancing tips for all you extroverts out there who
want to kill the rest of us with your Covid cooties...and small talk:
1. Bring a book with you everywhere you go. Most people are loathe to
talk to someone reading a book. Most people… Some will still be persistent.
What are you reading there? I’ve heard a lot about that book? Any good?
There is an easy remedy to combat this…
2. Wear headphones. Ha! Foolproof. There aren’t many who will try to
break through this line of defense. For extra, extra protection: combine tips
1 and 2.
3. Scan and avert. This one takes practice. Sometimes you’re in a situation
where you can’t read or have headphones on, in these cases you scan and
avert. Say you’re out grocery shopping. What you want to do is keep your
head down, avoiding eye contact for as long as possible. When you do have
to look around so that you don’t knock over a display of potato chips, quickly
raise your head, scan the area for potential small talkers, then if you see one
(or God forbid, someone you know) avert your eyes at once! If, by chance,
someone with a friendly face catches your eye, turn and run the other way.
4. Learn to say no. Or learn to lie and say yes when you really mean no. So,
maybe you have friends who are totally over Covid and want to hang out. Us
introverts have two ways of dealing with this. Of course, you could just say
no right off the bat, but…sometimes extroverts can be persistent and hound
you until you turn your no into a yes. The easiest course of action is to say
yes to a social interaction and then get out of it later. Some handy excuses:
I totally forgot, I lost my keys, my car won’t start, I was stuck at the bottom
of a well, I have a fever and lost my sense of smell and am short of breath
and…*cough* *cough*…wow I just don’t feel good.
5. Embrace the 21st century. Ah…life is so good for us introverts here
in the 21st century. We have Uber Eats for when we don’t want to talk to
restaurant workers, self-checkout for when we don’t want to talk to cashiers,
and Amazon for when we don’t want to talk to anyone. You can sit securely
in the cocoon of your home with all your technology and have a contact-free
existence for as long as our government overlords see fit. Ah…so quiet, so
clean, so people-free….
With all this stellar advice, we can surely kick this Covid mess to the curb
and soon it’ll be time for us to get together again and have a party! I should
go ahead and tell you right now that I’d love to go to this party, but I’m pretty
sure I already made plans for that day….
By Alaina Loughridge
FANTASY ISLAND
I was flat out excited to see the new Fantasy Island! I watched it as a kid and Ricardo Montalban was so charismatic as the debonair Mr. Roarke, owner and
entertainer of Fantasy Island: Whatever your fantasy is will come true in this paradise! Oh, and we can’t forget Herve Villechaize as Tattoo and the unforgettable
line, “The plane!! The plane!!!” Yeah, no. The first scene where the girl is running for her life and ends up hiding behind an office desk with no back panel really
did not give me good vibes. Naturally she gets caught because she’s stupid. It really did not help that she looks exactly like Lady Brianne of Tarth from Game
of Thrones, albeit younger and shorter. That threw me for a loop and I don’t think I recovered from it. Moving along…
I really didn’t like any of the characters. Lucy Hale, as Melanie Cole, is the main character visiting the island and her attitude is just snotty brat. The two
guys that come together are super irritating, as they are always high fiving and are just dumb, the single guy seems a little bit too over the top, and the last
girl by herself is just sad depressed. They all have their fantasies they want fulfilled, ranging from a never-ending party, to changing a regretful decision to
revenge. and lastly, a military adventure. Naturally, none of their fantasies happen as planned and in all the wrong ways. That’s where that whole line of ‘be
careful what you wish for’ comes from. Well, that and Candyman Part 1 and 2.
You won’t know any of the other actors off the top of your noggin. Mr. Roarke is also a huge disappointment. Played by Michael Pena, whom you have seen
before in various whatever movies as a supporting character, but Mr. Roarke is too big a personality for Mr. Pena. He did his best, but nope. No gravitas. No
mojo. None of what we want from Mr. Roarke (hey, it’s my fantasy and I do what I want).
The good news is there are a couple of twists at the end that are actually not bad. I didn’t see them coming and neither will you. Then… the actual last line
of the movie redeemed a good part of it – not the whole movie, but I felt like a better person having not exactly wasted my time on this movie.
As rum is the drink of the islands, I give this movie one bottle of Barbados Private Estate 1780 at an unemployment check amount of $10,667 per bottle,
because the last line of this movie was pure epic town, 1 bottle of Brugal Papa Andres Rum running at $1,971.99 per bottle, because the twists at the end
were pretty good, 1 bottle of Bacardi because it’s alright and 2 bottles of Skol Rum because the cast sucked and with these prices, I now understand why rum
is just a bad liquor. I’m going to throw in one cup of bar mat rum because had that girl been Brianne of Tarth, this movie would have been freaking amazing!