Terrible waste of an excellent novel

Rating: Null/10 (16 February 2000)

Alex Garland's brilliantly observed, if poorly finished, first novel is done no favours by this trite and hackneyed star vehicle for LdiC. Gratuitous love scenes, an APPALLING fantasy Game-Boy sequence and, good God, a happy ending where everyone goes home with happy memories of the time they spent on a desert island; this smacks more of The Blue Lagoon; Return to the Mediocre. None of the major events or characters of the novel are properly handled, few enough are even featured, as we watch Leo grin & grimace his way through his extended vacation. There's no tension, no threat of violence from within & without the group, no simmering discontent, no split and no violent denouement. Stay home & read the book, or better still Garland's excellent follow-up The Tesseract, unless you are a 12 yr old Capri-groupie moistened at the thought of Leo with his shirt off.