This tropical adventure achieves practically nothing

Rating: 4/10 (14 August 2010)

Watching the Beach is like looking at a postcard from a tropical island: it is a pretty picture, but it is also paper thin, and nothing happens in it.
This motion picture left me disappointed. It starts off promisingly, but with each passing chapter (sometimes pair of chapters) the story grows more dull. The editing is clunky, the script is underwritten, the acting is more wooden than the trunk of a palm tree, and the ending is rushed and anti-climactic. The only thing this motion picture really has to sell are a handful of nice shots and a good score.
Judging by the sloppiness of the story telling, it is clear that The Beach is definitely one of those book adapted movies that butchered its source material. It is a story that could've amounted to so much more. There is too much narration and not enough intelligent dialogue, and every now and then, just when you think the film is becoming something good, it changes again. Individual scenes work well on their own, but not in the context of the whole story. Take for instance a love scene between Leo Dicaprio and the french girl he invites on his trip to a lost paradise in the South Pacific. It's a well directed charming little sequence, but unfortunately, that particular character relationship ends with the scene.
Another problem with the Beach is that it requires a strong compelling lead, which it does not have. Perhaps Leo was just too inexperienced as an actor at the time. The character feels like a nobody, and his persona is sold to us almost entirely through his narrative monologues which feature pretty scrappy lines of dialogue.
In the end, the Beach sets out with ambition but the trip is unsatisfying. It is weak and ineffective, and if it does nothing else, at least it will remind you of how far both Leo and director Danny Boyle have come since this.