disillusioned and trying to find the spice of life , richard ( leonardo dicaprio ) sets off for thailand .
there he a meets crazed man by the name of daffy ( robert carlyle ) who gives him a map to a beach , a secret utopia , then commits suicide .
richard sets off for this beach with his neighbors from this hotel , ? tienne ( guillaume canet ) and fran ?
oise ( virginie ledoyen ) .
once they get there the three discover a secret society existing on this beach , there richard falls for fran ?
oise .
this covers about half to two thirds of the movie and aside from the romantic element , which is solely a creation of hollywood , seems to hold to the original novel .
the cinematography and general beauty of this part of the movie is breathtaking .
i do n't think anyone can argue that this movie is visually stunning .
but that is were many things go wrong
, darius khondji has totally outdone himself in doing the cinematography .
though the script and the interpretation of the novel are quite lacking .
the plot of the movie moves along at a decent pace for about half of the movie or there abouts .
this is where the movie has some great potential , then the three travelers get the island and there is a turn for the better , yes folks i said better .
now up to about two thirds of this movie its actually pretty good , nothing spectacular aside from the cinematography
but it still has promise .
this is where things start to degenerate to something that becomes almost un - watchable .
there is even a ' video game ' style sequence that borders on the disgusting , it does n't make sense for the movie and just looks dumb in my opinion ( and i am hoping many other peoples ) .
i am hoping that in my little rant i 've made it abundantly clear that the movie is lacking quite seriously in plot and uneven pacing , so if you go see it and you do n't like it because of this do n't blame me .
the character development was not up to par either ; i found the character of richard to be nothing more than a spoiled child .
although there is a feeble attempt to make this whole story profound it fails and richard ( leo 's character ) comes off as a wannabe philosopher .
the character seems to be underdeveloped from the get go and seems to just do things for no apparent reason , granted some people are like this ( myself included ) but i nor anyone i know that is fairly random would ever do things of the sort this character does .
the next point is that some of the really interesting characters are simply not developed enough .
richard is obviously obsessed by fran ?
oise at the early stages of the story , yet there is actually very little development along this story line .
this
i am sure contributes to the movie 's lack of core plot and being unfocused .
now , i shall move onto something a little better about the movie ( for all you cynics out there the movie did have a few good things about it ) .
the cast and acting was passable at the very least , and i think that leonardo dicaprio actually did pretty well in the role of richard .
mind you
i think the rest of the cast that had some which had reasonably sized roles did equally well if not better .
which begs the question why is leonardo paid so much ?
( i think this is a topic all on its own so i wo n't get into it ) .
but i like the fact that there was an international cast used ,
had only and american cast been used i can see this movie being horrible .
the international flavor added a more global feel to the movie that made it that much more bearable .
not to mention the movie is set in thailand and a global cast makes more sense .
when all is said and done i liked the movie for the most part but the gaping inadequacies of the plot are unforgivable .
i would not recommend this movie to anyone , the fact that i liked it has a lot to do with the cinematography and the sheer beauty of the movie not its plot or story .
as it is the story tries to be much too philosophical and fails at its attempt . if you do end up going to see this movie be forewarned about its shortcomings .
Output: N