Copyright © 2000 by Michael
Segers, All rights reserved
Starring:
Leonardo DiCaprio
Guillaume Canet
Robert Carlyle
Virginie Ledoyen
Tilda Swinton
Directed by Danny Boyle
Written by John Hodge.
Rated: R
So,
what do you do after starring, at a tender age, in the biggest movie of all
time? If you are Kate Winslet or Leonardo DiCaprio, the golden couple of Titanic,
you say, what the heck, and make a tacky little movie about a boring character
going to exotic climes for selfish reasons, a tacky little movie that most
likely never would have been made without the drawing power of Katie and Leo.
The lady relieved herself of her Morocco-based Hideous Kinky (which might
have better been called "Silly Pretentious") last summer, while the
gentleman is just now slogging through a Thai-dyed mess called The Beach.
Five
minutes into the film, after Richard (DiCaprio) had downed a shot glass of snake
blood, I had high hopes. But, then, the serpent got revenge… on the audience.
The film dragged on, from a messy suicide in the kind of cheap hotel that was
seen in last year's Broke Down Palace, to a nutty commune of what once
would have been called hippies but now are slackers. At least, Leo escapes the
Thais that bind in the horrendous prison in Broke Down Palace, but no
such mercy is shown to the audience. As I was leaving the theater, I overheard a
bit of a conversation ahead of me: "Even though you bought my ticket, I
still feel cheated."
Richard is a young ugly American (Leonardo? Ugly?) for whom third world
countries are amusement parks. He is looking for adventures, and-- Remember the
old saying, if the gods wish to punish you, they answer your prayers? At the
hotel, he comes into possession of a map to an idyllic beach that is an urban
legend among the other young Americans and Europeans hanging out, waiting for
something to happen.
He
invites a young French couple to join him in his search for the mysterious
beach. With high hopes for this film, I had already fashioned an elegant
paragraph on the imagery and symbolism of beaches, zones where two different
environments come together, but I scrapped that. Beaches are good settings for
films like this because they give you a chance to see a lot of chicks in bikinis
and wet tee-shirts as well as Leo without a shirt.
So,
they find an island paradise. That is, if your idea of paradise is smoking lots
of pot, wasting lots of time with a Gameboy or endless games of volleyball, and
eating fish every day. Tilda Swinton, still as enigmatic as she was in the
transgendered Orlando, even if here she is limited to one sex, presides
over the whole colony. They leave the island only for rare outings to stock up
on batteries (gotta feed them Gameboys) and makeup remover (anyone for roughing
it?). When one poor soul needs to see a dentist, however, he is not allowed to,
because to do so would jeopardize the secrecy of the group. By keeping him on
the island, we get to hear a lot of screaming during a tooth extraction without
benefit of anesthesia, and he gets a totally awesome necklace, dude--his tooth
on a piece of string.
But,
even in paradise there are sharks and drug dealers who just won't listen to
reason. (Gee, if you are going to share a tropical paradise with a bunch of drug
dealers, you would want them to be decent, honorable guys, now wouldn't you?) In
one of the most absurd sequences I've ever seen in a movie, Leonardo somehow
ends up in a take-off on Apocalypse Now, complete with head band; even
after some days in the jungle, however, nary a whisker sprouts on his chin. Oh,
yes, there are reminders of Apocalypse Now (a scene of which shows up on
a hotel television set near the beginning of the film, in case anyone needs to
be reminded), even Lord of the Flies, but the whole thing is more
redolent of Gilligan's Island. Angelo Badalamenti, composer of the lean, subtle score, does
more than any of the other perpetrators to create a mood of foreboding and
unspecified danger.
By
the time the Russian roulette scene comes around (gee, why have I been thinking
of The Deer Hunter?), I was hoping the bullet would be in the chamber.
But, no such luck, so we can look forward (?) to a sequel, Son of a Beach.
Enough bad puns, although they are
no worse than this film deserves. The truth is, I don't think any web sites
deserved to be linked to this mess of a movie, so I'll close with nothing more
than my usual admonition that you keep your feet dry (and sand out of your
shoes) and your heart full of noble thoughts.
The Rovin' and Ravin' Film Reviews