What a letdown!

Rating: Null/10 (27 April 2000)

3 words - Biggest Letdown Ever!
After seeing the beautiful trailers and listening to "Pure Shores" by All Saints I was so geared up to see this movie! And for the first 30 minutes I still had hope, that this might just turn out to be a movie close to my heart. After that nothing spectacular seemed to happen and then in the last 40 minutes the movie got sooooo screwed up it was hard to believe. It's like the writers said "Oh what the hell, we aren't making anything really good so let's just really make it suck, that might work!!" Leonardo is portrayed an as unethical sleazebag bummed-out liar, one gets the feeling that this actor can get only as good as his director - too bad there was no James Cameron to make him shine this time. Ledoyen barely has 12 lines to her credit and is so under-used we really can't pass judgement on her. The other performances are all very average. We don't really get to know any characters really well either. The only character who gets you to care about him is Etienne, played very well by Guillaume Canet, who too was by the way, under-used. Add some really unpleasant scenes of fresh shark chewed legs and stale gangrenous legs and you have something that you don't exactly want to encounter in your hunt for paradise. The dialog is simply juvenile and pathetic. It tries in a half-hearted and copy-cat way to be cool but fails MISERABLY! The location is question is undoubtably beautiful, the huge waterfall takes your breath away and so does the moonlit beach. One thing that put me off was that this beach was totally enclosed by huge rocky hills giving it a somewhat claustro feel. It was more a lake than a sea. An an eerie lake of death judging by it's man-eating inhabitants. Maybe they could shoot the next Jaws here. . . seriously! There are 2 kinds of people who'll want to see this movie, those interested in the concept of a sea-paradise and those crazed by Leo. I know the former will be let down. As for the latter, well it depends how crazed they are!