Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

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Cast Away is the thought-provoking movie about a volleyball trapped upon a deserted island with only a washed up Tom Hanks and his beard for company. (Tom Hanks’ beard that is, not the volleyball’s beard. The volleyball has no beard. (And yes I’m fully aware that making fun of the volleyball has been an easy shot since the movie first came out – I’m not above easy shots. If director Robert Zemeckis is going to set me up then I’m going to leap right in and spike it. That’s the kind of volleyball-lovin’ nut I am. But I digress.))

Why oh why oh why did they not just cut twenty minutes off the beginning and the end of this film? Save us all a lot of time and angst. After all, do we really need to see anything prior to the plane crash? Do we really need to see anything after the volleyball’s companion is rescued? Answer: No, we do not. I say remove all scenes with Helen Hunt in them.

In fact, ‘remove all scenes with Helen Hunt in them’ is probably a reasonable rule of thumb for just about any film or theatre production or, indeed, long-running sitcom which drives you more and more batty until you just want to take Paul Reiser aside and say ‘enough already’.

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