Movie Critique - The Beach

By: Dominick Ward-Pistone

The Main Idea: The Beach is mainly about a young man who is given a map to an island paradise. He somehow convinces two total strangers to join him on his journey. When they arrive at the island they narrowly escape being caught by a group of marijuana farmers. Later they discover a small town, which is completely secluded from the outside world, on the island. They decide to join the civilization, and from then on things start to go downhill.

The Bad: For starters, The Beach is a movie that over-steps its boundaries. Its previews convince the viewer that the movie is a flat out action flick before they even see the movie itself. Well, the previews lied. It is clear that the director of the movie tries to turn it into a drama, mixed with a little romance and insanity. Frankly the end result is not very easy on the eyes. Furthermore, the movie takes too much for granted. It seems that the main character, Richard, merely needed to show up at his neighbors' doorstep in order to convince them to journey with him. He even gets them to organize the whole trip for him. It just seems a little too easy for me. The movie becomes unnecessarily weird during the part where Richard goes wacko. As far as the acting goes, don't expect any nominations this time from any award show.

The Good: Despite the mediocre acting and weak story line this movie does have one really superb thing going for it… the camera shots. The usage of close ups and camera angles in this movie is truly professional. There is one scene where the camera delays the screenshots for a few seconds causing a very cool multiple image display. Even though I saw the plot to be a tad too extreme for the film, some people may find it to be intriguing. Other than that, this film really doesn't have much else going for it.

The Bottom Line: Not a movie you'd want to see twice. For that matter, I wouldn't recommend seeing it once. That is, unless you're really into good camera usage.