text: *May contain spoilers*<br /><br />I bent over backwards to be fair to this film. I knew it starred Madonna. I knew it lasted a whole week in theaters. I knew it got a lot of bad reviews. I wasn't expecting a deep and thoughtful examination of class, culture and sexuality like we got in the Italian original. The benefit of the doubt lasted a whole ten minutes.<br /><br />Madonna plays a rich, pretentious, nit-witted Gorgon who goes on vacation with her henpecked husband and flippant friends (the brunette woman is as bad as Madonna, exhibiting some really dumb facial expressions). Adriano Giannini plays the ship's first-mate who the Madonna character delights in humiliating and treating like dirt in every scene they have together. Why is she such a bitch to him? Simply because the plot requires it so that later when the two of them get marooned on a deserted Mediterranean island the tables will be turned and he will teach her a lesson. Just as inexplicable is how they fall in love despite having nothing in common and having abused each other for two-thirds of the movie.<br /><br />"Swept Away" is a silly, simplistic, superficial movie from beginning to end. Madonna gives a typically wooden performance. There are many dumb scenes: Madonna singing and dancing atrociously at the demand of Giannini, a fantasy scene with Madonna and a lot of scenes where he slaps her and kicks her in the butt. Guy Ritchie does his "stylish" editing which is laughable here. The film contains some of the worst dialog I've heard in a major movie in several years. The ending is sappy and implausible. It's basically "The Blue Lagoon" meets "Overboard" minus the nudity of the former and the sense of humor of the latter.<br /><br />Maybe Madonna's ego is so big that she insists on continuing to prove herself as a competent actress. Please give it up, Madge, for our sake as well as yours. This isn't her worst movie though. That distinction still belongs to "Shanghai Surprise". She hasn't made anything worse than that...yet.