MAGIC ISLAND
(1995; d. Sam Irvin, w. Neil Ruttenberg + Brent V. Friedman)

Gameplaying, fatherless (w/o vision of balanced adult masculinity) teen Jack, lacking also workaholic mom’s presence (no model of relation, either social or btwn male/female facets of self), resorts to adventure + heroism ("I gotta save the princess" retort to West Indian [othered earthy, uncorrupted wisdom in technosuperficial white-boy world] nanny Lucretia’s invitation to talk minutes before attempting runaway), given her gift of title book (male writers/dir’s gift from regenerative anima to eternal teen w/i, as to [male] audience) – "This ain’t no Game, Boy" – once given to her as passage (cover vessel) to both selfhood + interaction V diverting him from solo adventure (runaway) to social.

While asleep, drawn into pages, where Blackbeard (barking, animalistic id + mutinous unconscious) + crew Duckbone, Jolly Bob + powder-pouf Sapperstein (sub-id; respectively, corpulent gluddony, quick-to-his-sword vilence + self-interested vanity) crossing swords w/ Prince Morgan Hildebrandt (heir to throne boy’s own highest potential waiting to prove self) + cohorts Gwyn + musclebound Dumas (latter soulful [black, à la swashbuckle-auteur namesake] strongman: placid nurturer, fellow-WI Lucretia’s own latent "masculine" pwr) over whereabouts of treasure map: clash btwn pirates + buccaneers as btwn desire + responsibility, only one of which discloses "path" to enlightenment/reward/maturity.

KO’s B’beard on arrival from sky (as Boy Who Fell to Earth, this film more positive, accepting take on mythical journey into world than Man), along w/ Gwyn’s smoke bomb (not last time film’s masculine works in concert w/ feminine) allowing good guys to make break, Dumas carrying also-unconscious Jack (bald, black, muscular religion transporting blond, white, doughy techie [identified by his CDs, loudspeaker, GameBoy, computer, TV] into jungle/nature), who on waking dubs self Mad Jack (becoming not-self, assoc’d now with both book + titular, chthonic "Madjack" Island).

Dumas tells of isle’s wish-fulfilling properties (he intersection of Christianity + paganism [+, as superstitious bodybuilding "scholar," of soul/body/mind], crossing self + referring w/ respect to "island gods"), playing on both fears + desires (à la unconscious); enacted when hungry Jack conjures pizza-tree same time D’bone turkey- (latter J’s ravenous adolescence incarnate), both frustrated, leading to Jack’s 2nd + final warp-fall, into ocean (further back, evolutionarily), where saved by mermaid Lily (ultimate mtg w/ transitional inner [as own uterine fe/male] self) – rescued by own emergent (½-human, ½-fish: beginning re-evolution) femininity: to save Princess, J must 1st be saved by her.

Lily grows legs (mobilized by heroism) + joins Jack + others (while B’beard’s crew separates: isolation making self vulnerable) on longed-for adventure (integration of fem peer into "masc" journey, as archetype into self), contributing own nature powers ("sea" now w/i); all set about trapping pirates (while Bb brained 3rd of 4 times: eternally tortured + abused id, till final KO, project of sicialization to tame instincts) + succeed only in getting 3 elders captured + buried up to necks in sand (sleeper’s disembodied head split into separate i.d.’s in dream), saved when jrs spook watchman D’bone into fainting (constant KO’s ego’s insistent self-negation in order to permit transformation to occur).

Next encounter bickering 3-headed direction-giving totem (own conflicted moral-spiritual compass), replaying (Dumas,) Gwyn + Morgan’s decapitated romantic squabble; repetition w/ variation compulsive nature of pathology, slowly moving fwd: quarrel btwn male+female parts of selves mediated/aggravated by sniggering 3rd-party eunuch à la JBob, D’bone + S’stein), fey Morgan + Iconic Black Dumas switching places in treeincarnation (wimpy lover replaced by voice of Iconic Isaac Hayes), ascendance in self of strong-natured masc still in trivial dispute w/ inseparable fem’y; that night, Dumas (corpulent Db’s good-guy double) spooked by retributive pirates(à la Db/kids, maturity now getting upper hand), again separating kids from elders, all finally re-convening at treasure-tomb of island god Carbasas (center of Self, where treasure/reward [spiritual ascendance] found) guarded by Harryhausian Stone Guy emerging from earth/underbrush: both prelingual nature-boy past (as threat) + "stony" adult future, behind which lies fortune/independence; dispatched by film’s final bonk to head (last stage of sleep, during which transformation takes place).

Inside tomb, head of Carbasas (core personality + never-seen, iconic – "golden" – not-the-father, played by dir) – Bb’s gilded lookalike (god-self bodiless transcendence of id, or id in transfigured form [his "poncy arctopus" à la Invaders from Mars' similarly tentacled + disembodied noggin]) – awakes + turns Bb to gold (turning solid, opposite crumbling Stone Guy: img, once dis-integrated, now internalized; or, boy’s inner gold externalized): becoming NTF, drama also mythologizing mother’s quest for $ (leaves Jack for business mtg which cd make them "big $ – more than yr father ever made") + eventual futility of same.

Rescues reverting Lily (devolving fem-self in tomb-womb place of transformation) as walls close in (threatening to compress/integrate all characters/facets into one: individuation), rug he pulls her out on woven of spun gold (rescuing "princess" – own rudimentary/transitional-transformative fem qualities – results in reward) – his gift to friends (Prince having also left abandoning mother to prove self, treasure method of honoring anima in order to garner her returned respect + return to state of grace/inner harmony) on returning her to sea (their spiritual communion marked by her gift of ring-symbol of wholeness; good guys’ taking on new crew Db + Jolly Bob integrating negative characteristics into similar condition, magical return of galleon to their control reward for doing same: restoration of wholeness).

Jack’s return to reality ("awakening") effected only on learning of 3rd-wheel Dumas’s waiting lover Marguerite (on-the-horizon romance for loner teen), Lucretia’s ancestor + author of book, revelation the abracadabra (speaking, or "remembering," true name of God: romantic union) that returns him to matriarchate content now w/ his position in it; mother's epiphany (in front of roomful of presumably male bosses: own conscience + old-order patriarchy abandoned by similarly awakened mom) that son more important than $ J’s return to her good graces à la Morgan/Queen, heroic journey + treasure that redeems him reconciliation w/ own fem aspect, Lucretia ordering pizza feeding similar hunger – another reward – thwarted earlier on.

Pleasing throwback to ’50s/’60s matinee fodder like Boy + Pirates and 7th Voyage of Sinbad.