The Beach 2000, Rated R 20th Century Fox

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Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, et al. Released to DVD on July 25, 2000.

Every once in a while you'll come across an incredibly good looking man or woman who is as stupid and ridiculously vapid as he or she is attractive. The Beach is the cinematic equivalent of that person. On the outset of this film, the story of an American traveler (Leonardo DiCaprio) who stumbles across a map to a south Pacific paradise, everything seems glitzy. The locations seem beautiful, the actors glamorous and pretty and the notion of finding an island paradise desirable. However, as the film wears on, and the true nature of the movie begins to unfold--humans are nasty, brutish and short tempered in any situation, regardless of location--and I realized that The Beach was nothing more than an adult rip off of The Lord of the Flies, the scenery quickly lost its charm. Director Danny Boyle included an amusingly trippy video game sequence, where DiCaprio appears to be in a Super Mario like world, but neither this nor the exotic locales and actors could turn The Beach into anything worth seeing.