An unpleasant and frustrating experience

Rating: 4/10 (29 November 2016)

Danny Boyle's The Beach was an awful viewing experience for me and thinking back on it is just as unpleasant, so naturally I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about it.
The reason that The Beach is so awful is because it is so pretentious and full of itself. It gives a painfully obvious and blatant expression on a social commentary that feels so forced.
The Beach is also extremely boring. I was patiently waiting for the movie to pick up, but after an hour of pure nothing, I gave up hope and assumed that the rest of the film would be just as uneventful. Sadly, I was right.
The Beach feels like a 2-hour long Expedia commercial. The music is cheap and terribly cheesy and the cinematography is sometimes interesting, but mostly just dull.
Leonardo DiCaprio did give an entertaining performance even though he did overact quite a bit. Tilda Swinton wasn't bad either, but the rest of the cast is just so forgettable and boring that it even weighs down these two characters. Robert Carlyle was one of the few redeemable aspects of The Beach. His character was utterly mad and it seemed that he loved playing this character, which made him a blast to watch.
The story is painfully slow. We have to endure long stretches of Leo's character expressing his obsession for a girl he barely knows, then we are suddenly treated to a horrifically graphic shark attack scene. The tone of The Beach is never established. Most of the movie is extremely depressing and generally uncomfortable to watch, but then the movie ends on a gleefully happy note as if nothing bad even happened.
The best way I can explain The Beach is that it is a confused, hyper mess of a film that tackles a social commentary so blatantly obvious that it comes off grossly pretentious. And any time Danny Boyle tries to have fun, it comes off as just awkward.
While The Beach does have a passionate cult following, I simply cannot find enjoyment in the film myself. It's dull, pretentious and just messy. I respect Danny Boyle as a film maker but I really don't know what he was hoping to achieve with this one. I'm just grateful that the whole experience was completely forgettable. Another trip to this mind- numbing "paradise" wouldn't be good for my sanity.