Review: The Blue Lagoon
Blu-ray & DVD: The Blue Lagoon (1980)
Cousins Emmeline (Brooke Shields) and Richard (Christopher Atkins) Lestrange (cool name) are on a voyage to some unknown destination with Richard’s father. After a fire onboard, the two children are shipwrecked with the ships cook Paddy Button (Leo McKern) on a beautiful desert Island.
Poor old Randal Kleiser, hot off directing Grease, the biggest musical in modern film history and his first cinema feature film, the world was literally his oyster, and he choose to direct The Blue Lagoon. Apparently he didn’t know it had been made twice before, once in 1923, then again in 1949 (starring Welsh actor Donald Houston and stunningly gorgeous 19 yr old Jean Simmons). Going right back to the source material he hiked up his crew to Fiji and from the extras on the disc, may have thought he was making a classic.
I have a vague recollection of this film making a lot of headlines before it opened in the UK, because of its ‘forbidden love’ between 2 teens, but mainly because it starred Brooke ‘Pretty Baby’ Shields (I won’t go into detail about Pretty Baby here, but do Google it if you’ve never heard of it).
Of course there was never any mention of Richard and Emm being first cousins, just that Shields was TOPLESS and TWELVE (she was 14), also she was never topless. Her hair is glued fast to her chest (which is completely flat). It’s also plain to see that during all the ‘touchy feely’ bits, that isn’t Shields but a stand in. Move on, there’s nothing pervy here.
This was my first viewing and on reading up a little about the film I expected a mishmash of teen angst, tits, and terrible acting, well the acting isn’t great…no surprise considering this was Atkins first go at any type of performance, and although by now Brooke was a seasoned actress (she started at 11 months) she’s very pretty to look at, but her acting chops are still lamb cutlets.
Without a doubt the real star of this film is the scenery. It IS Paradise. I do think Kleiser didn’t do such a bad job, and followed the book closely and here’s where the problem is (he later went on to direct Flight Of the Navigator and the oddly …umm indescribable Big Top Pee-wee).
All along the children are warned to never stray to the other end of the Island because the Boogeymen will get them. They are in fact indigenous cannibals who visit the Island to perform human sacrifice, and the thought of some sort of ‘confrontational ending’ is palpable, and yet never happens.
The ‘awakening sexuality’ figures largely in the middle section and is portrayed by Atkins stroking a stand in with her hair placed just SO to hide her face, however her boobs are much larger than Shields so its very obviously not her doing the … umm.. lying still bits.
I have to say that although not the best film ever made, this certainly isn’t the worst and despite the awful acting and crap ending I DID find myself enjoying it. Seeing 2 hopeless teens not knowing how to feed a baby reminded me of the many locals high on mamba who also don’t know how to look after their kids. Albeit in Wrexham and NOT Fiji.
Imagine if this was re-made today, there would be no (SPOILER AHEAD!!!!) sat wanking on a rock into the sea. No it would be hardcore heaven, we’d get to see every pump and grind and probably get some money shots too, because I don’t think there is any ‘innocence’ in film today because of porn being readily available on the internet. So, this really isn’t as bad as you think it’s going to be, in fact living in cold North Wales I found the scenery blinded me to everything else.
It also has some great extras, the 2 commentary tracks being especially good (boring commentaries are a pet hate), not only giving insight into the filmmaking but actually making the film more entertaining.
Another great release from Eureka Entertainment.
The Blue Lagoon will be available to buy from 10th April 2017.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- Stunning High-Definition Presentation
- Isolated music and effects track
- Audio Commentary featuring Randal Kleiser, Douglas Day Stewart and Brooke Shields
- Audio Commentary featuring Randal Kleiser and Christopher Atkins
- An Adventure in Filmmaking – a behind the scenes featurette on the making of the film
- Original theatrical trailer
Review by Tina (co-host of 60 Minutes With) from a disc kindly supplied by Eureka Entertainment.
