The Beach

One would think that the Trainspotting team of Danny Boyle (director) and John Hodge (screenwriter) would be a perfect pair to adapt prodigy-novelist Alex Garland's edgy, hallucinogenic travelogue about a Southeast Asian adventure gone awry for a Gen X-er with wanderlust. But it appears 20th Century Fox put Boyle on a pretty short leash after securing Leonardo DiCaprio for the lead, and the picture subsequently became an utterly common and uninvolving amalgam of paradise photography, detached pop psychology and watered-down danger. Part Robinson Crusoe, part Lord of the Flies, the film features DiCaprio as a traveler who stumbles onto a hidden island utopia (inhabited mostly by Gap models) and sets in motion events that may destroy the colony's peaceful, concealed existence. Optional. (R. Blackwelder)