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Issue #06/87, March 30 - April 13, 2000  smlogo.gif

Krazy Kevin's Kino Korner

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A Tale of 2 Daves

By Krazy Kino Kevin McElwee

[Disclaimer: Krazy Kino Kevin has not actually viewed the film "reviewed" herein, that is, THE BEACH. And contrary to popular belief, this has been the case with only a handful - in any event, certainly fewer than five - of those discussed in more than three years' worth of Kino Korners. Anyway, it should have been fairly obvious in most cases when he was talking out of his ass - such as the virtually unqualified praise garnered upon The Fifth Element. That one was a doozy, wasn't it? Well, you can rest assured that the envoy responsible for that blunder has been properly punished: he's now married, and is even rumored to have given up drinking. By the way, it also goes without saying that Kevin has most certainly not read the Alex Garland novel on which this film was based.]

I was gonna go see THE BEACH, honest I was. But then I got to
thinking... it's Sunday evening, the jump to Daylight Savings Time has already robbed me of an hour, practically every bone from my neck down to my knees is aching furiously, and my feet have been numb for at least ninety minutes now...

To stand erect, let alone leave the apartment, was simply not a viable option - least of all to watch Leonardo DiCaprio on an Apocalypse Now/Lord of the Flies head-trip as some pampered hippie backpacker in Thailand. (I was not even yet aware of the film's trendy-British-cult-novel roots.)

Fortunately for yours truly, it was at this point that a second (and as far as I was concerned, confirmatory) field report came in: namely, a reliable source revealed that a mutual friend named Dave had seen The Beach and disliked it mightily. However, I cannot tell the story of this second Dave without first delving into the tale of another, Canadian Dave, whose account of the film had come to me firsthand over dinner the previous night. (Perhaps now is as good a time as any to mention another, non-Dave Canadian, whose sole comment on The Beach was that she heard "DiCaprio has been putting on weight." On a more general critical note, she also indicated that he "hasn't really been hot for a couple of years now." True enough, even if it is only the inevitable backlash talking.)

Having seen the film just a few hours earlier, this Canadian Dave was - quite understandably - still too stunned to go into much detail about the experience. What he was able to convey, however, was none too promising. A poor version of the novel (pulpy but a "page-turner," as he described it); conclusions that were trite and simplistically moralizing; excessive length; overhead shots of the titular Beach and adjacent bay that were quite obviously digitally rendered. Perhaps not the sort of thing one would expect from the writer-producer-director trio responsible for A Shallow Grave and Trainspotting - anyone who hasn't also seen A Life Less Ordinary, that is.

I should add that our Canadian-Dave narrator spoke rather positively of the shark-attack scene. However, upon consideration of numerous conflicting reports received subsequently, I now see in this doggedly optimistic attempt to provide a thoroughly fair description of the ordeal an early symptom of Stockholm moviegoer's syndrome that - had Dave been subject to The Beach's nefarious influence for much longer - could easily have developed into full-on proselytizing on behalf of other nonexistent merits of the film.

Indeed, many critics singled out this attack as one of the film's least-convincing scenes, the apparently mechanical sharks appearing "lifeless" and "rubbery." And had I actually seen the film, I can easily imagine myself
referring to these sharky machines as "Nerf-like," possibly even as a heavy-handed and quite extraneous "Nerfeus ex machina." I might well have enjoyed it, too - the sheer clumsiness of the quasi-Latin pun, I mean.

But in the meantime, Dave #2 has been patiently waiting to take over as narrator while Canadian Dave recovers from his near loss-of-judgment experience. It is perhaps no coincidence that this second Dave is also a North American and works in the same field (albeit in a different capacity) as our Canadian Dave. Or perhaps it is. It's really of no concern to you, one way or another.

More importantly, Dave #2 comes us to as something as an expert on the subject matter at hand. Besides the fact that he has seen literally tons of movies (which is significant in its own right), Dave #2 - by his own admission - spent a fair amount of time in his younger years "doing the scene" in the Thai backwaters portrayed in the film. Moreover, he has even read the source novel (upon the recommendation of one of those helpful "you'll really love this"-spouting people who never seem to know what in hell they're talking about).

Well, notwithstanding a purely sporting interest in both the book and the movie (i.e., seeing the "hippie traveler element portrayed"), Dave found the novel to be quite terrible, and the film still worse. In particular, the latter deviates quite markedly from the former in ways that seem calculated solely to massage DiCaprio's ego. Another glaring problem - from both the dramatic and aesthetic points of view - is that the French chick (Virginie Ledoyen) who becomes the temporary object of DiCaprio's obsession is not nearly hot enough. She seems to look pretty good in the picture above, but I'll have to bow to Dave's judgment on this one.

Ultimately, Dave #2 says that - even more so than the novel - he would not really recommend this film to anyone who hasn't done some similar traveling in the region in question. Although he does admit to a certain curiosity as to how the uninitiated might respond. Alas, I was unable to provide him with such a response. Perhaps one of you might do so.

In closing, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to both Daves for their bravely researched input, without which this Kino Korner would not have been possible - and I might very well have had to leave the house on Sunday evening.

 

P.S. AMERICAN BEAUTY still sucks (mostly). Now it has the five Academy Awards to prove it.



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