Indecisive film

Rating: Null/10 (22 February 2000)

There are a few spoilers ahead. You are now warned!
I read the book a while back and was impressed out of my pants! I have never read a book which appeared so real. What was the most amazing was his style of writing. I could just picture Richard, someone in my age group with similar back ground and similar values, talking to me about his experience over a couple of beer. So I reckoned that it would be a really difficult book to turn into a book and do as well. And here it was. I was disappointed with the film. It was very half way. It followed the book for some of the plots, but changed quite a lot of things. The book had events developing, leading us to some place. The film had many random events which seemed to go nowhere. Like the shark attack. That changed a lot of things in the book. In the movie, that seemed to do very little. It would have made no difference to the film if that was there or not. And Richard's involvement with Sal and Francois. That seemed to do nothing as well. In the book, his infatuation with Francois was interesting because nothing developed. Once they become a couple, it had no impact on the film. The ending of the film was very Hollywood. Richard screaming out philosophy of the beach did nothing for me. The ending in the book gave me nightmares. In the book, things went horribly wrong, so wrong, and was left like that. There was no big speal on justice.
All together, I think this film had a potential. Someone could have made a good love story, a good beach adventure/action, a very alternative or experimental film, or stick to the book and see if one could create the atmosphere of the book on film. But the movie was little bit of all of that, causing it to be half way at everything. It is a shame. It really should have been one thing, not pieces of many.