Not a disaster, but low for Boyle

Rating: 6/10 (28 November 2011)

Many people call The Beach Danny Boyle's weakest and most disappointing films. To those people I say, "Hey... they can't all be perfect." The Beach stars Leonardo DiCaprio, infamously snatching the role from Boyle favorite Ewan McGregor causing a dramatic fallout between the two, as Richard, a young guy who, while visiting Thailand, gets his hands on a map that leads to a mysterious island rumored to be a paradise. Richard meets two French tourists in his hotel and asks them to set out with him to find this elusive paradise. From here the film branches out into part romance, part adventure, part psychological thriller. It never really catches its footing and it never steers in a clear direction. It's not a disaster but it isn't an excellent film either.
There isn't much about The Beach that is noteworthy or memorable. It isn't terrible in any one department, it's just lacking in all departments. Visually it isn't anything terribly special. This may be because of the high expectations I have from eccentric visual mastermind, Danny Boyle. The Beach lacks his nuanced flare and incredibly unique quality to the style. The music selection for the film is admittedly neat, but the visuals are sub par in comparison.
But where The Beach really lacks is its poor script and uninteresting characters. There's nothing very compelling about this story and the characters don't engage your mind and nothing special really happens. The dialogue is often silly and unnatural and there are too many unrealistic changes of character tone. There are amateur mistakes being made here, such as when a character is fine one second but then gets overly angry just so that something irrational will happen in order to move the story along. The Beach doesn't flow naturally and a lot of what happens feels very forced. The acting is nothing special either. Tilda Swinton's role is really the only one worth mentioning, considering DiCaprio isn't much more than a pretty face in this movie. All of these faulty elements to The Beach certainly could have been much worse, but they don't make this film anything special.
To see a film of this low calibre from an auteur like Danny Boyle is always shocking, but it's simply what happens. They can't all be winners and The Beach is proof of that. But I can only rejoice in the fact that I can so easily forget about this dull little film by watching 28 Days Later..., 127 Hours, or Slumdog Millionaire instead.