The Beach

Anybody who hasn’t been in a coma and therefore lost track of the calendar knows it’s a bad sign: Leonardo DiCaprio’s first movie produced subsequent to his Titanic fame (1998’s The Man in the Iron Mask was shot before what was then being called “Cameron’s Folly” was released) comes out in the middle of February. On a weekend when the biggest new competition is direct-to-video-quality releases from Disney and Nickelodeon, no less. Even before the opening credits roll, it doesn’t take a Hollywood marketing genius to figure all is not well.

From the writing/producing/directing team that created Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, and A Life Less Ordinary, The Beach posits Leo as Richard, a wastoid Young American habitual liar traveling Thailand in search of sex and drugs. But even he gets tired of typical tourist stuff like hanging out in Bangkok bars watching “The Simpsons” and, portentously enough, Apocalypse Now, eventually gravitating towards wilder-side diversions such as drinking snake blood (that’s what happens in the third world: one day it’s all pristine, and before you know it there’s a Snake & Shake). So when a weedy, psychotic, suicidal Scot (Robert Carlyle) (the best character in the movie – another bad sign, since he kills himself early on) gives him a map to a supposed secret island paradise, Richard hooks up with a young French couple also eager for a less public locale to soak up more sex and drugs, and off they go.

It turns out Shangri-La really exists – a rocky outcrop sheltering the gorgeous sandbox of the title, where a couple dozen neohippy exiles live in uneasy coexistence with nervous, well-armed dope farmers on the other side of the island. All of which must agree with Richard, seeing how he turns into a skinny bronze superman, stealing the French girl, bedding the commune queen, killing a shark mano á fisho, and playing Rambo with the dope farmers.

Trouble ensues. People shout. “Road Rules Goes to Gilligan’s Island.”

Too bad Leo has apparently misplaced everything he learned about acting in his early work such as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Here he’s little more than a noisy, obnoxious vehicle for director Danny Boyle’s distracting, unnecessary arty sequences featuring shots of Earth as seen from space, wanton FX, a Super Leo Brothers video-game, and slo-mo underwater make-out scenes punctuated with bland technopop. As for Andrew Macdonald’s script – the same guy, mind you, who wrote the great Sean Connery pellet-gun scene in Trainspotting -- I was having a really hard time suppressing unintended laughter until I heard people around me giggling at what were supposed to be serious parts, too, and cut loose.

Even worse, depending on whose word you’re willing to believe, Leo & Co. did so much damage to the island where was The Beach was filmed that, following the rainy season, that beautiful stretch of Thai sand is now somewhere off the Outer Banks buried in golf balls.

There is one semi-interesting twist at the end. But would you want to go see a movie just because it can be described as not quite being a complete, utter, unforgivable waste of time? D

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page