Stupendously mediocre (The Beach (DVD))

Member Name: Alternum

Product:	The Beach (DVD)
Date:	08/08/00 (4 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Marvellous settings

Disadvantages: Fragmented and unsatisfactory plot

After the media hype that surrounded the release of this film, you'd have thought there would have been at least something in it to reward us for going along to it, but no. Sadly, even for someone who didn't read the book and thus has not been let down even further, it just doesn't measure up.

I'm sure everyone knows the basic plot by now. Leo diCaprio is doing backpacking in Thailand when he is given a map by a crazed Scotsman to a mystical place called The Beach. Meeting up with two French people, he proceeds to go there, integrate himself into the society that he finds there, de-integrate himself again, and more or less brings the whole thing crashing down about his ears.

Frankly I found it extremely dissatisfying as a film. Firstly there is a part of the film probably just after the middle where Leo appears to simply go off his head, and runs about the jungle like some sort of vigilante. It seems to bear no relation to the rest of the film, and feels very misplaced. Secondly, Leo, as I have said, destroys the entire settlement, but seems to end the film with no sort of remorse for that, no conscience of it, and this makes for an extremely odd feel to the end. To be honest you feel as if it was his aim to destroy it.

Granted, the scenery is fantastic. Granted, the cinematography is fairly good. Granted, the lead pair are horrifyingly attractive. But these things do not alone a good film make. You need to be drawn in, to feel what the characters are feeling, to feel enlivened by it, for it to be thought-provoking. And The Beach, I'm afraid to say, did none of these things for me.

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