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Review Uploaded
11/15/02

Starring: Madonna, Adriano Giannini, Bruce Greenwood, Jeanne Tripplehorn, David Thornton
Directed by: Guy Ritchie

Rating: * star (out of 4 stars)

Okay, so whose idea of a bad joke was it to serve up yet another disposable and inconsequential Madonna movie? For those of you still trying to digest The Material Girl’s previous film follies (anybody interested in reminiscing about The Next Best Thing?), then be aware because fate has played a dirty trick on you once again. In Scottish writer-director Guy Ritchie’s efforts to concoct an exotic and neatly wrapped celluloid gift for his hideously flawed actress-of-a-wife Madonna, he serves up the abominable and silly-minded tedious tropical romancer Swept Away.

One swears that Madonna must possess a perverse pleasure in taking a critical beating based on the atrocious cinematic choices she makes in her so-called scattershot and transparent movie career. If anything, the results predictably remain the same: a dial tone can still out act Madonna despite generous efforts from filmmakers to cater to her on-screen shortcomings. Hubby Ritchie doesn’t do his celebrated spouse any favors by trapping her in a staggeringly paradise piffle of a movie that has all the appeal of flossing with urine-coated salty island seaweed. It’s safe to say that Ritchie should stick with his strengths by offering a conveyer belt of repetitive and irrelevant actioners such as Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. After all, why should the moviemaker exhaust and corrupt TWO movie genres, right?

Ritchie’s interminable attempt to promote his significant other in a tawdry and high-spirited romance adventure is as waterlogged as an errant Mediterranean wave. Swept Away is based on Lina Wertmuller’s 1974 glossy fantasy where the sun and sand blended in with the Italian sexual politics and ideology of her two stranded, glimmering protagonists. Whereas Wertmuller’s original film had a surging passion and feel for its carefree social overtones, Ritchie’s remake is nothing more than a tepid and floundering farce feeling its way along the beach shore of banality. There’s nothing remotely sensual or engrossing about seeing the miscast Madonna lounge around in a pseudo-provocative romance flick that has all the energy and charisma of a dead starfish.

In agonizing fashion, Madonna plays Amber, a wealthy and soiled bitchy type with a temper tantrum as plentiful as her taste for living the lavish lifestyle she enjoys immensely. Amber isn’t exactly the dainty debutante prototype and she has the foul-mouthed demeanor to prove it. Amber’s incessant nagging is constant and eventually tolerated by her well-to-do American businessman hubby Tony (Bruce Greenwood) and their elegant friends as they all enjoy a scenic chartered boat cruise on the Mediterranean. However, Amber seems to save her best toxic-tongued remarks for poor seaman Giuseppe (Adriano Giannini). The flustered Giuseppe is fed up with Amber’s infuriating antics and secretly wishes that she go somewhere and drown herself (hey, you certainly can’t argue with the guy’s dream in this case-in fact, we should encourage more of this activity from him!).

The weary Giuseppe (also known as Pepe) is viciously labeled the moniker “PeePee” courtesy of the crude and rude Amber (raise your hand if you find this tidbit cleverly amusing). The antagonism between the pair becomes more festered when they ultimately end up on a deserted island together. Naturally the volatile relationship undergoes a hate-love roller-coaster ride as the calculating couple find themselves in a forced co-dependency stronghold. Because the pampered and blunt Amber got her way on the ship in the manner that she emasculated the bewildered Pepe, the perturbed prettyboy gets a golden opportunity to turn the tables on the loudmouth lass. Pepe has the upper hand because he has the survival skills that can keep them going. Hence, if the irritating Amber wants to live in her precious materialistic existence ever again, she has to play the subservient sexual partner (looks like the put-upon “PeePee” will get an upgraded nickname to “Master”…gee, how quaint, huh?) while cutting down on her sassy behavior. After all, this sandy prison may very well be the key comeuppance that tames this tattered tart. And thus the arbitrary message about opposites attracting and the complex world of sexual dominance is realized albeit in an obvious and lame context.

Swept Away admittedly has an aimless awkwardness that is so simple-minded and excruciatingly feeble. Ritchie’s flick is a punishing by-the-numbers romantic comedy-of-errors that doesn’t know how to tap into its wicked take on sexual power and the psychology behind gender-based angst. This charmless and misplaced shipwrecked showcase will have most folks wincing at its backhanded mantra regarding how the shrill Amber gets “schooled” by the emerging masculinity of the equally liberating Pepe (the film glorifies the “growth” of the henpecked hunk by showing him hitting the intolerable Amber as a measure of “keeping her in line”). What an exploitative and cheap method of trying to conjure up a burgeoning male-enhancing affirmation! This is suppose to create some sort of warped even playing field by hinting at the fact that men and women are at endless unconventional struggles in an effort to find that elusive common ground-perhaps in the arena of sexual mischievousness and distinctive societal standing. But Ritchie’s disjointed and deranged intentions miss the mark totally and it never results in anything worthy of being considered gleefully insightful or devilishly wry. Instead, this sluggish and dunderheaded vehicle only reveals that sheer boredom sparked by an uninspired moviemaking husband-wife team can also corrode captivating film locales that are meant to soothe the tireless eye.

As a production, Swept Away is breathtaking and Ritchie’s camera lens does compliment the gorgeous scenery in which this bland story of social class status and sexual tension unfolds. However, all the swaying palm trees and icy blue water in the world cannot hide the sorrowful reality that Ritchie’s real life leading lady Madonna languishes in this embarrassing dud as a series of uneventful vignettes flash along with the urgency of cracking a coconut with a rock. Madonna is mawkish and extremely bothersome as the detestable Amber. Her whining and subsequent embracing of forced obedience at the mercy of a spiteful chiseled wavy-haired Neanderthal will definitely set back the feminine movement with this unintentionally hilarious performance. Madonna, quite frankly, is as graceless as she is insufferable in this unpolished spectacle. Hmmm, that certainly sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Giannini, whose father Giancarlo played this very same role in the Wertmuller-directed original, exudes an alarming sexiness that will certainly delight and trigger countless female hearts to flutter uncontrollably. But the much younger Giannini looks terribly out of place trying to strike up some heated chemistry with the clad bikini-wearing fortysomething Madonna. Watching these two sparring lovebirds ignite a flame of mutual titillation in the buff felt relentlessly laughable. It was like oddly viewing The Graduate crossed with a recycled version of Blue Lagoon. After a while, watching this studly MTV-made Robinson Caruso and his moody middle-aged obliging Girl Friday enduring the motions of a bizarre bickering love quandary became immediately monotonous and grandly uninviting.

Well, congratulations are in order to Madonna as she continues to consistently wander into the realm of securing that sacred category known as “Clueless Musicians Who Have No Business Trying To Act In Dismal and Forgettable Feature Films”. It’s a crying shame that some people just can’t take the hint and know when to just step away and concentrate on what they really do best. That overused phrase “keep your day job” doesn’t exist just for the sake of existing. Whenever you agree that there’s more credibility in spotting a flying donkey with the hiccups rather than believing in an effective Madonna-hired acting coach, then you definitely earned the license to go with your first instinct.

Make no mistake that this half-hearted and flavorless kiss-and-tell adventure needs to be “swept away” convincingly-right in the corner of the room with the rest of the useless debris.