Unconvincing, sluggish farce with good scenery

Rating: Null/10 (20 February 2000)

What a dissapointment. Even after hearing the poor reviews, I was hoping for the best. What we have here is a movie that has a fantasy island soap opera type story centering around neo flower children and anti establishment hippy types, born to surf and smoke dope, where nobody can find them. Plot continues with a pretentious romp through the jungles of said "secret" island by a few daringly foolish kids. Character development is weak; the film uses the ploy of introducing characters by very staged and phony scenes, where one by one, the characters mumble a few lines about themselves, sort of reminiscent of Armageddon and Drop Dead Gorgeous, and move on.
I never really identified or felt sympathy with most of the characters. I didn't enjoy the films little hat tip to its scenes vaguely similar to Apocalypse Now.
The best thing about the movie is the scenery, but even that did not seem to be captured very well, as many scenes seemed dark and blurry or unfocused and poorly lit, I guess in an attempt to develop mood.
This movie had great potential, but in retrospect, it just tried to