If you’ve seen the trailer for The Beach, you may think that you have a pretty good idea what the film is about.  Pretty American boy and pretty French girl find a secluded desert island paradise, then roll around in the sand and screw their brains out until some really mean guys find the island and everything gets really scary.  That’s what I got out of it, anyway.

To call the trailer “misleading” would be a bit of an understatement.  Sure, there is still a secluded desert island paradise, and the boy and girl are still pretty, but everything else happens quite differently.  Does it matter?  Hell, no.  This is, more than anything, a Leonardo DiCaprio film.  The fact that he is shirtless for the majority of the film is enough to guarantee that teenage girls throughout the country will pry their eyes away from Total Request Live long enough to beg their parents to get them into this R-rated film.

DiCaprio (Titanic) plays Richard, an American vacationing in Bangkok that decides he’s tired of doing the same thing as the other tourists in Thailand.  Dude, when was the last time an American went to Thailand and didn’t have a harrowing experience?  The only person that ever had a successful cinematic voyage to this southeast Asian country is Anna Leonowens.  And she had to sing and hang around a gaggle of kids.  Just go to the tourist traps, get VD, go home and get a shot.  Or better yet, vacation only within your own country where, unless your last name happens to be Griswold, everything is safer.

The Beach begins with a very Se7en-ish opening shot (cinematographer Darius Khondji also worked on that film) showing Richard arriving in Bangkok.  Although the city is referred to as “Good Time City,” Richard explains (through a sometimes annoying voice-over) that he is easily bored with the scene, which basically consists of spoiled kids looking for a fresh location to toke up and the natives that try to take advantage of their fat wallets and perpetual high.

In his one-star hotel, Richard meets the people staying on either side of him.  There’s Étienne (Guillaume Canet, In All Innocence) and Françoise (Virginie Ledoyen, A Single Girl), the sex-crazed French couple.  And then there’s Daffy (Robert Carlyle, Angela’s Ashes), a deranged Scotsman that tells Richard about a secluded desert island paradise of crystal-clear water, pure white sand, waterfalls and never-ending fields of pot, just before offing himself because he can’t get the place out of his head.  There’s Sign #2 – don’t go to the island, Richard.

Of course, Richard goes to the island with Étienne and Françoise, thanks to a map that Daffy left for him before he did himself in.  It takes a while to get there, but when they do, the trio find the island every bit as beautiful as they imagined, but it’s also inhabited by a flock of gun-toting Thai pot farmers, as well as a commune of hippies on permanent vacation.  They are welcomed by the members of the beach community, yet despite the perfect surroundings, Richard still seems sullen, just because he wants to nail Françoise.

Before you know it, you’re over an hour into the film and no clear protagonist has been established.  Is it the shark that tries to gnaw on unsuspecting swimmers?  Nope.  Is it the shifty-eyed boyfriend of the group’s leader?  Nope.  It’s more of a destruction-from-within/Lord of the Flies deal.  And that’s not the only theme borrowed from other works.  The Beach is chock full of references to American films about the Vietnam War, Nintendo games and Looney Tunes characters.  It would have been easy to imagine Richard turning into Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, even without using clips from that film here.

The Beach is based on Alex Garland’s wildly popular novel of the same name – it’s been called the first great book for the Generation X crowd – and was made by the folks that brought you the wonderful Ewan McGregor trifecta of Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and A Life Less Ordinary (director Danny Boyle, screenwriter John Hodge and producer Andrew Macdonald).  Those of you that read the book might be wondering, among other things, why Ewan wasn’t cast as Richard in the film, since the character was a Brit in the novel.  Beats me; I’m wondering the same thing.

From what I understand, the novel offered a gruesome bloodbath for its ending, but the closing reel of the film is a bit anti-climatic and leaves a lot of issues unresolved.  Go figure – when was the last time a movie didn’t do the book justice?  In the filmmakers’ defense, they did not exploit the relationship between Richard and Françoise.  Though they never “hooked up” in the book, Hodge’s script offers a surprisingly refreshing lack of romance between the nubile youngsters.

DiCaprio is solid as usual, Ledoyen does her job by looking fantastic in a bikini, and Carlyle does the crazy thing as well as anyone in film today.  If nothing else, The Beach looks and sounds fantastic.  Khondji (Evita) and scoremeister Angelo Badalementi (The Straight Story) are more responsible for effectively setting the tone of the film than the script or acting.  Filmed on the Thai island Phi Phi Leh, The Beach might be gorgeous enough to overcome any problems that you may have with the script.

1:58 -  for violence, nudity, strong sexual content, adult language and drug use