The Beach (2000)

  This was Danny Boyle's (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire) third big movie.  For about two thirds of it, you can't really tell.  When it veers into complete insanity, though, it has his name all over it.

Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a kid putzing around through Thailand, looking for some experience outside of the normal tourist stuff.  Really, he's just looking for any experience, something that will show him that there's more to life than what he's had so far.  When his crazy neighbor Daffy (Robert Carlyle) tells him about a secret beach on an island that is as close to paradise as man can get, he is intrigued.  There are snakes in every Eden, however, but Richard refuses to heed the signs, taking the map Daffy left him and two French tourists, Etienne (Guillame Canet) and lovely Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen) in search of this mysterious island.

What they discover is a whole commune of like-minded people, held together not by ideology but by the sheer desire to escape from the world.  Sal (Tilda Swinton), the leader, warns the three newcomers that the other half of the island is owned by a ring of drug farmers.  Their peace has been bought with the promise that no one else can ever know about the beach.  Everyone goes to great lengths to keep their paradise hidden. 

Maybe because I was running errands all day and I had to keep pausing it, but this movie felt like it was three hours long.  I kept waiting for something interesting to happen, or at least for the characters to stop being such complete snots.  Richard is almost completely unlikeable, lacking any and all redeeming characteristics.  He is such a typical self-centered twenty-year-old I wanted to reach through the screen and slap him.  Also, having Tilda Swinton in charge of anything is always going to turn out badly.  Look at Narnia. 

Also, I'm not usually one to point out continuity errors, but I loved that he was out in the woods for weeks and yet his hair never grew out.

Moral of the story, kids?  Don't invite Leonardo DiCaprio on your Southeast Asian vacation.