The surreal experience of The Beach began with the presence of O.J. Not the juice, but The Juice. Yes, O.J. and his son were in the audience Sunday afternoon at The Village in Westwood, and I was hoping to catch up with America's most notorious failure of justice (or so the common belief goes) after the movie to see what he thought of it. But I didn't see him. He either snuck out a side door, or all the knives in The Beach made him nervous and he fled. Again.

And that's where the surreal experience ended. Then the movie began.

Okay, now, far be it for me to question one person's view of paradise, but I'm gonna do just that. If your definition of paradise includes all of the following, then The Beach may be just the Tragic Destruction of Utopia flick you're longing to see: Pot, sweat, spear fishing, cricket, pot, sarongs, pot, stealing other people's girlfriends, gun-wielding farmers, pot, cults, sweat, amateur tooth extraction, pot, communal gardening, sharks, death, and pot.

How did you score? Sound like your kind of paradise? Didn't think so.

I know one of the points of this movie is to show that there is really no such thing as a lasting paradise and that utopias always come crashing down through the meddling of something called Humanity, but for this theme to have any impact, the paradise we see destroyed should in some way be attractive in the first place. You may understand how Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio), Etienne (Guillaume Canet), and Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen) can be drawn in the world of The Beach because they have that Bohemian spirit, where the pot and the sweat and the vagrancy of life are indeed what they seek. But for us watching, all comfy in our theater seats with our Cokes and Dots and Dolby Digital, it looks a little gross. We can thank director Danny Boyle for that. He directed Trainspotting, which is, if you think about it, a similar film. In that movie, the characters think they have some kind of paradise in heroin, but of course it's nothing but grungy, skanky doom. Danny tones the skank down a bit, but not completely, for The Beach. I liked Trainspotting a lot more than this movie.

Maybe I should mention that the movie is dumb. It's stupid in many ways, mostly having to do with plot. Skip ahead if you don't want to know, but what's up with putting Christo in that tent? Why couldn't he be lowered to the boat and brought to safety? Sure, he said he didn't want to go near the water, but I'm sure he didn't want to be left to rot in a tent, either, and the happy beach community put him there anyway, so why not force the guy to the boat? And why on earth did Richard go bonkers in the forest there while waiting for the super dopey pot-head Americans to arrive on the island? Where did that come from? And why so quickly? The movie definitely suffers from both Convenience Syndrome and Cool Syndrome. Convenience Syndrome is when something is put in the movie for the convenience of the filmmaker, so he or she doesn't have to work as hard. Cool Syndrome is when something just looks cool, so it's thrown in the movie for no apparent reason.

I'd be negligent to fault the movie completely for it's dirty, sweaty patina. At first, that's what makes the movie interesting. When we first join free-spirited American traveler Jack in-- er, sorry. I mean Richard. When we first join free-spirited American traveler Richard in Bangkok, the grunge has already begun, and the seamy, slimy side of international travel is displayed in regal splendor. It's interesting and atmospheric and pulls you right into the movie, boom. But, frankly, there's no change once Richard and his French hangers-on arrive at the secret but not really that secret because it's perfectly visible for miles and miles island. Things become more relaxed in their paradise, but they still are gross and there's a ceaseless sense of impending disaster in the air, of something not quite right. They may have found paradise in word, but in tone, the movie doesn't let us believe this.

This is way too much brain power to be wasting on this one, I'm afraid, and I think you get the point, so I'll wrap up with a word or two on the acting. It's good. Leo's chosen his in-your-face Romeo+Juliet style, and it fits in this movie. He gets to play a nice range, including the silly Lord of the Flies-meets-Rambo sequence. Oh, and he's quite a sport for doing that funny video game bit that shows up when he's going crazy. Very funny. Tilda Swinton was skin-crawlingly creepy as the "leader" of the beach community. In several scenes, she looked like a shark, with dark, dead eyes and that strange nose... a relevant symbolic similarity, even if it was just in my head. Virginie was officially gorgeous as the requisite love interest, and she had balls, too, even though she was French. (I couldn't resist.) There are other people in the movie who did nice work, even considering how easy it is to play stoned, but I'm getting the munchies now, dude, so I think I'll say sayonara and split.

Hey, dude, you may wanna wait for this movie on video. I mean, Jesus, tickets just went up to 9 fucking dollars, man, and you gotta save that for some doobage. Or rent Heavy Metal, man. It's the most awesome!

2/14/00

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