Spoiled brats on vacation

Rating: 4/10 (7 March 2002)

What a disappointment. Danny Boyle had recently directed one of my favorite films of the last few years, Trainspotting, and although Leonardo DiCaprio has never been between the actors I liked, I had somewhat high expectations for The Beach. It turned out that DiCaprio's acting is actually the best thing about this clunker.
To say that The Beach didn't have the space to develop its ideas would be wrong. The movie is based on a book by Alex Garland, and while I never read the book, I must say that the concept the movie seems based on could be interesting. The search for a new way of living outside our society and considerations on the impossibility to find the perfect Paradise on Earth are captivating, and as a nature lover I must say that it is really rare that pro-ecology undertones don't appeal me. However, these themes were treated in such a vapid, superficial and often hypocritical way in The Beach that when the movie was over I was not just bored, I was irritated.
I am not blaming the author of the book. In fact, it could be that the novel is a good read. But if the movie is a good adaptation of it, then I am sure I will skip on the book for the rest of my life.
The Beach opens in Bangkok; Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio), a young American man, is here on vacation. In the hotel he meets Daffy (Robert Carlyle), a dope-smoking lunatic who shows him the map to an island where, it seems, it's possible to find the most beautiful place on Earth. Richard doesn't pay much attention to him, but when the next morning he finds that Daffy had killed himself, he steals the map and wonders if this beach really exists. Finally he decides to take a chance and, along with a young French couple, he takes a trip to the fabled island.
To this point, the film is not particularly good, but it is at least interesting. But as soon as the movie gets to the beach, everything starts going downhill and it never stops, reaching the worst with the awful finale.
When the three young tourists get to the beach, they get to know that they are not alone. A small village of young men and women already lives here, and although it seems like a disappointment at first (at least judging from DiCaprio's voice-over), when Richard and the French couple get to know them and their way of living, they begin to be very fascinated. The small village, it is said (more on this later), is self-sufficient and they can live without any contact with the outside. The problem is, if anything happens, they are on their own.
The movie puts in some romance between the French girl, Françoise (Virginie Ledoyen), and Richard, and some time is spent on the consequent grief of Françoise's boyfriend. The romance however, fails to generate any sparks, and the focus on Françoise's boyfriend anger is shifted off so abruptly he practically disappears from the movie. However, as uninteresting as the romance is, it is not nearly as bad as most of the rest.
First of all, there is not one likable character. Most of them are either paper-thin, irritating, spoiled, and usually all things together. There is much talk about how these young people are self-sufficient, and yet we see that they are not: they hardly do anything all day. Richard himself has to go on the outside world to buy goods for the island community, and most of these goods are the typical unnecessary comforts many tourists look for when going on vacation. The people on the island play video games and buy beer; it's never shown where they put their trash. In many scenes the movie looks like a Club Med commercial, and it is a pity since the problems of a small society truly living on its own never get the possibility of being delved into.
During the course of the movie, two characters are attacked by a shark. One dies in a brief time, the other is left dying in the woods because, it seems, the island community doesn't want people on the outside to know about them. Deus ex machina anyone? How does "bringing a man to the hospital" immediately connect to "revealing where the community is"? And when the members of the community go to play volleyball while their friend is left dying, one would at least expect that it is a starting point to show how they will be unable to cope with their own sense of guilt. It never happens.
In a completely different scene, Richard suddenly loses his mind without apparent motivation, and one has to wonder what it is all about. And after some nonsense that leads to the killing of four tourists who reached the island, he snaps perfectly awake again. Absurd.
And when Richard finally gets back to 'normal' society, we see him thinking about the island with nostalgia. That's right. Puh-lease.
Stylistically, this movie is a huge step back from Trainspotting for Boyle. The music is barely tolerable, the cinematography relies on the beautiful scenery but puts in some inappropriately silly scenes, such as Richard transforming into a video game hero while walking in the forest. The performances, apart from DiCaprio's (pretty good, but not very good) range from average to bad. But what's most disappointing is the treatment of the subject matter. Trainspotting had ideas, characters and story. The Beach has ideas that never get developed, irritating characters, and a story that barely stays together.
4/10