a faithful adaptation of the book...

Rating: 1/10 (29 May 2001)

...which is a shame because the book is crap. it purports to tell us all what traveling is like and the wonderous things that happen to us and make us (deep breath for a wonderful americanism) 'grow'.
so what we have is a collection of people who are travelers but have found somewhere lovely and have...ermm...stopped traveling and instead created a lovely little utopian world. with no strife. or worries. or interest. having gone traveling from my point of view this film is utter drek. you go traveling for two reasons 1) to go and see and do different things and 2) to go home again. cos you see, if you dont go home then in fact you are NOT a traveler. you have stopped traveling. you are a traveler no more.
there was more sexual tension in the film then the book (not surprising since the book amazingly had no sexual enmity between all the young 20 somethings) but what the film did miss out on was the strife over the divisions of labour and who had to do what to contribute to the community.
instead, what we get is a collection of badly underwritten annoying people preening and sunning themselves in nice locations. so many people had no characterisation that it just hurt...until you realised how bad some of the others characters were and wished that they were similarly underwritten. it goes nowhere and says nothing. dicapricorn is an horrific actor and does less with the material he is given but the whole film is a shambolic mess. at least the book had the decency to admit that when richard went back to the world that he looked back at his time at the beach as though he was a different person. but no, what we get is leonard looking at a lovely holiday snap...forgetting that two of the people in the picture are dead (and that he killed one of them) or that another one of them pointed a gun at his head. but dont worry, cos it was a life affirming event and richard has 'developed' and 'grown'. well, thats all right then.
lord of the flies for the MTV generation who wouldnt recognise a film that has no minor things like a plot, or story or characterisation or anything really. buy it for someone you hate.