Would this film have played better as a social satire?

I don't mean they the film should have been made as a comedy, but that it should have been a satire of late 70's/80's American culture and society, much as Planet of the Apes was a satire of late '60's America. Both films dealt with a World Upside down. However, the Apes film had the good sense not to take itself too seriously, interjected some excellent satirical content. The Island utterly failed in this regard. The film was funny in all the wrong spots and unintentionally campy in others. The violence was also absurdly excessive.

The big mistake they made in this movie was thinking that the audience would maintain their interest one the pirates and their island were revealed, and that they could play it as a 'straight' movie. They did 'play it straight' for the most part, until the end of the movie where things oddly turned to camp during the Coast Guard attack.

I think the film did have some of the right ingredients, but the film-makers didn't seem to fully realize this. For instance, the Gun Shop owner, who was so willing selling guns to a minor. The violence, paranoia, and religious fundamentalism of American society should have been paralleled with the violence and paranoia, and religious fundamentalism, of the pirates.

I would also liked to have seen Caine talking his son to a South Florida Mega Church, in order to draw a parallel with the religious fundamentalism of the pirates. Another instance was aboard a raided boat which was full of cocaine. Michael Caine's character when asked to explain to his pirate 'wife' what illness cocaine cured, said 'it cures insecurity'. Above all, the capitalism and consumerism of America should have been compared and contrasted with the piratical methods of real pirates. Michael Caine's character should have been a business man, not a reporter.