On B List of Movie Reviews

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The Blue Lagoon (1980)

Rate: 7
Viewed: 4/25

4/25: The Blue Lagoon may be infamous, but I found it honest, daring, well-made, and totally believable.

The critics have done the film a great disservice by focusing on the nudity and incest. I didn't see anything inappropriate or exploitative but was rather surprised that Randal Kleiser, director of Grease, went so far for purity reasons. For shooting the film on location in Fiji, Jamaica, Malta, and Vanuatu, Néstor Almendros received a Best Cinematography Oscar nomination.

If anything, the acting can be a downer at times. However, I don't consider it as a negative because Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins, who were 14 and 18 respectively at the time of filming, played two characters who didn't know anything much. How they behaved, reasoned, and did things is fitting in light of what happened. It would've been more believable if Richard and Emmeline were brother and sister, not cousins. At any rate, I'm glad Sean Penn and Jodie Foster were rejected for the roles; that would've been so bad.

As for the black natives, critics laughed them off for being unrealistic. How would they know? Most likely, they're uneducated and didn't want to cross over a certain line for spiritual reasons just like the two principal characters. Some said Richard and Emmeline didn't do much sexually. Had they done so, that would've made for a boring movie, effectively turning it into porn.

All in all, The Blue Lagoon doesn't deserve the hate it has gotten over the years.

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