The Overrated Mr. Boyle

Rating: Null/10 (12 February 2000)

Danny Boyle's idea of movie style is shooting frenzied, bug-eyed closeups through a fish-eye lens. In lieu of genuinely powerful images, insight into character, compelling drama or even effective suspense, he offers rants and raves that in Trainspotting and Shallow Grave were an amusing novelty. Of course, those pictures are now as dated as the corniest sixties psychedelia.

As for The Beach, it's a watchable, mildly entertaining movie that stumbles and bumbles in its attempts to go where the material is pointing. The references to Apocalypse Now are a sad reminder of the difference between an ambitious mediocrity and a director who knows how to make the screen throb with life.