Boyle's latest is waste of perfectly good sand

"The Beach"

Directed by: Danny Boyle

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton, Virginie Ledoyen, Guillaume Canet

Rated: R

Not one to stray from a trend, I, like every other reviewer who discusses Danny Boyle's latest film, "The Beach," will start off by saying that it comes off like a cross between "The Blue Lagoon," and "Lord of the Flies."

Now that that's out of the way, let me also point out that "The Beach," especially in its opening act, also borrows heavily from Francis Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" there are even scenes with the main character watching it on television but never comes close to achieving the dramatic tension evident in that classic.

On the whole, the problem with "The Beach" is that there is no whole. Individual scenes and plot devices start out just fine, with promises of developing into something tasty. They go nowhere. It's a shame, because there is the potential for a good film here from director Danny Boyle, who did the wildly inventive "Trainspotting."

Not that "The Beach" isn't a great looking film; it is. The fact that it stars Leonardo DiCaprio also ensures that 99 percent of teenage girls (and the guys who are trying to date them) will see it, so money is sure to be made, the studio will be happy, the critics be damned.

As a matter of fact, teens are more likely to take this film seriously than those of us who have already gone through our "Let's move to a Utopian paradise, smoke pot all day, dance all night and live on the beach" phase and have realized that a dream like this, as simple as it may sound, is pretty hard to achieve.

DiCaprio plays Richard, a young American who is traveling the world in search of ... something ... mostly himself. When he lands in Bangkok he gets a room next to a freaked-out Brit named Daffy, who plies him with great pot and rambles on about the most beautiful beach in the world and the society of free-living beautiful people who inhabit it.

The place is on an island that is virtually inaccessible, but Daffy has a map. When Richard wakes the next morning he finds that Daffy has left him the map. Daffy has also committed suicide. Dark foreboding event No. 1.

Richard befriends a young French couple, Etienne and Francoise, and invites them to come with him to find the legendary paradise. This is mainly because he has the major hots for Francoise.

As they make their way to the Thai coast, and a boat that will take them to an island near their dream world, Richard befriends yet another couple of American tourists. These guys are serious drug users and, hence, fairly late sleepers. They don't wake early enough to join in, but before striking off with his French pals Richard copies his map and slides it under the stoners' door. Dark foreboding event No. 2.

After much ado, Richard, Francoise and Etienne are on a beach, and in the distance they spot their personal fantasy island. Like any healthy young people, they decide to swim for it. What's one or two measly kilometers in a shark-infested ocean anyway?

Needless to say, they reach their paradise and the first thing they stumble upon is the biggest field of marijuana ever depicted on film. It's watched over by machine-gun toting drug lords. Richard and pals make a narrow escape and, after wandering through the jungle, they come upon the beach and the utopian society they've been seeking.

Bongo playing, dope smoking (and of course beach volleyball) are the daily regimen here, and it isn't long before Richard's other dream comes true. Francoise drops Etienne and shacks up with Richard. It's a perfect world.

Well, not quite.

A couple of the island citizens get bitten by a shark. One has the good sense to die right off, but the other lingers. His cries of anguish bring down the mood of the commune, so benevolent dictator Sal has the sick man moved into a tent, far from the happy campers. Out of sight, out of mind. Utopia returns. It's at this point we begin to suspect this blissful community might be on the verge of turning ugly. Dark foreboding event No. 3.

When Sal spots Richard's shipboard American friends on a nearby island, she banishes Richard to a sentry post with orders to retrieve the map and turn the new kids away.

Richard finally flips and the film veers towards, its inevitable, and predictable, end.

While I enjoyed individual scenes, and the settings are breathtaking, "The Beach" never coalesces into anything more than so many grains of sand.

(Jim Wunderle works at Associated Video Producers and is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician.)