Abysmal

Rating: Null/10 (27 April 2004)

THE BEACH (2000) *1/2 Leonardo Di Caprio, Virginie Ledoyen, Guillaume Canet, Tilda Swinton, Robert Carlyle. Flaccid adaptation of Alex Garland's novel about a young American abroad in Thailand (Di Caprio) who comes across a map to a desolate island paradise and embarks for the promised land with his befriended French couple where they discover less than idyllic offerings in an all too good to be true hideaway from civilization.
Comes across as a hybrid of 'The Blue Lagoon' and 'Lord of The Flies' as envisioned by a group of stoned hippies with a lot of laughable sequences and a surprisingly uninteresting plot (man becoming more uncivilized and the disharmony after madness approaches one's being). Ledoyen is as wooden as a mannequin and there are more than the average stupefying moments in this film in recent memory (her boyfriend does NOTHING when he FINALLY catches on that Leo is giving her the high hard one?!! And then disappears from the film for 20 minutes?!!) (Dir: Danny Boyle)