Fox's Fantasy Island reboot could be better, but it's easy to watch

The Hollywood Reporter

"The actual premise of Fantasy Island is so broad and repeatable it’s amazing that we haven’t gotten an annual attempt to reboot it, as opposed to one 1998 revival with Malcolm McDowell in the white suit and whatever the heck Blumhouse tried to do in 2020’s horror film," says Daniel Fienberg of the Roselyn Sánchez-led Fox reboot of the classic 1970s/1980s ABC series starring Ricardo Montalbán. "I think Fox’s new Fantasy Island reboot could absolutely be better," he adds. "Through four episodes it’s nonstop half-baked high-concept storytelling made with clear COVID and budgetary limitations, but you know what? It’s OK, never memorable but with potential to be watched in roughly the same way the original probably should be watched, namely checking out the episodes featuring guest stars or premises that interest you and skipping the rest with no real sense of guilt. This update features Roselyn Sánchez as Elena Roarke, the latest in a long line of Roarke family caretakers to a tropical island capable of changing lives through fantasy experiences that range from elaborate cosplay to straight-up magic. Elena, who seems to have also inherited her ancestor’s closet of stylish white suits, does not have her own version of Hervé Villechaize’s Tattoo, because she’s perfectly capable of generating her own excitement at the regular arrival of planes, piloted by the hunky Javier (John Gabriel Rodriquez). She does have a golden retriever sidekick named Mr. Jones — woefully underutilized — and a newly introduced assistant named Ruby (Kiara Barnes), whose backstory I won’t spoil."

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• Fantasy Island is a welcome outlier, but it needs to embrace its premise more wholeheartedly: The original Fantasy Island had an undercurrent of danger, but the Fox reboot offers something gentler. "I don’t think that’s a bad decision; there’s enough darkness around these days, fictional or otherwise," says Nina Metz. She adds: "I’ve long had a theory that the recurring familiarity of certain TV formats can be reassuring and comforting in ways that have been devalued as viewing tastes (and delivery mediums) have changed. At the moment, very few series offer this kind of episodic consistency outside of cop shows, because most have gone the season-long serialization route. That makes the new Fantasy Island a welcome outlier. Even so, the producers seem skittish about embracing this wholeheartedly. The original followed a predictable template in ways that served the show to its advantage. Guests either won their trip to Fantasy Island or forked over $50,000 for a three-day stay. They would arrive by seaplane, always, and be greeted with leis placed around their necks and a trayful of cocktails as Roarke informed his colleagues (but really us, the viewers) what fantasies were on deck. And then the show would get right to it — no dallying — before wrapping up the episode the same way it began, with the guests waving goodbye as they boarded the seaplane to parts unknown. The current version never mentions anything as gauche as money. And it plays around with the arrivals — two guests sky-dive in, another comes by helicopter — which feels like an effort to prevent things from getting stale, even in the first few episodes. But adhering to a structure is what gives these types of shows so much of their appeal."
• Fantasy Island is surprisingly deep: "This Fantasy Island lets itself off the hook too often, tending toward the simplistic," says Daniel D'Addario. "And though the White Lotus-y surroundings evoke a contemporary wellness resort, there is little in the story about what people in 2021 would expect from their time there. There’s a certain first-pass quality to the writing here: Just a bit of polish would have benefited a show meant to evoke the best of everything. So it comes as a surprise when Fantasy Island signals it has something more on its mind. It pushes back against Sánchez’s tight reserve, suggesting the loneliness inherent in fulfilling everyone else’s dreams. Sánchez does not give the viewer too much to hold on to, but she summons grasping affection both for assistant Ruby — herself plainly ambivalent about island life — and for John Gabriel Rodriquez’s Javier, the pilot who flies guests from the mainland. They’re all trapped, ceding their lives to this project. On the margins of a good-enough show is a sense of mournfulness and angst."
• Fantasy Island would look a lot better if it hadn't premiered on the heels of HBO's The White Lotus: "Frankly, this latest Island visit would be better off had HBO not recently premiered The White Lotus, a much better, more complicated look at travelers to an island paradise and those who serve them," says Brian Lowry. "The most new-look aspect of this Fantasy Island, by contrast, is that the person greeting the guests is Elena Roarke (Roselyn Sánchez), the great niece of the original white-suited emcee played by Richard Montalbán, who notes that stewardship of the island has been in her family for generations. Beyond that, there's a somewhat serialized aspect involving one of the characters introduced in the first episode, and a sexual-tension thing happening between Ms. Roarke and Javier (John Gabriel Rodriquez), the handsome pilot who flies over the new guests. The formula otherwise remains largely the same, just with more contemporary flavor, such as a woman who comes to the island facing a terminal illness, and whose flirtation with another woman makes her husband wonder if she settled by choosing him decades earlier."
• Roselyn Sánchez says continuing Ricardo Montalbán's Mr. Roarke legacy is something "I’m embracing with all my heart": "The premise is very much the same," she says of Fox's Fantasy Island. "It’s about wish fulfillment; it’s about growing as a human being; it’s about making dreams come true. Guests come to the island — they have a desire, they have a dream, whatever it is — then the island helps them navigate through a journey that has magic and can fulfill them. But the fact that the lead role is a female, that’s a testament to how the showrunners wanted to do something that is a little more current. Directors, a lot of heads of departments, showrunners — they’re all female, behind the camera and in front of the camera. They took some creative liberties that are going to elevate the material, especially the fact that you have minorities in charge as leads. It’s keeping up with the current times." What sets this Fantasy Island adaptation apart from its predecessors? "Because of everything that is going on in the world right now," she says. "The world — especially in the United States — is in such an in-between, gray area right now, and I think people are looking for escapism, things that are positive. You want to still see blue skies, and you want to see hope for the future. I think people want to see minorities. Inclusivity is a very important topic nowadays, and we, all these different ethnicities that are so underrepresented, are fighting hard."
• Sánchez on not including a successor to Hervé Villechaize's Tattoo: “There were two ways to go about it. One was to really follow the original to a T and bring in a Tattoo the way he was," she says. "But the creators (Liz Craft and Sarah Fain) took a lot of creative liberties, for lack of a better word. And they decided to make this host female and very much Hispanic and let’s give her a sidekick and let’s give her a right hand that is not going to be what people expect. I was happy with it. I thought it was very clever. I think it’s current and I think it’s relevant in the way they did it. Now, I hope to God, because Tattoo was such a symbolic and beloved character, that I hope the audience, the new audience and the old audience, the people that enjoyed the original, will embrace it the same way that we are embracing it, because we actually think it’s brilliant.”
• Showrunners Liz Craft and Sarah Fain wanted to create a new Fantasy Island mythology: “In our mythology, there is always a Roarke family member who is the custodian of the island, and that person always has a second," says Fain. "That second always has a very particular tattoo — which, yes, we took from the character Tattoo (from the original series). It signifies their importance. The island chooses the person that’s the right person for that particular Roarke. Ruby is the right person for Elena, and we’ll see their relationship grow over the course of the season in a beautiful way.”