Hey there, dear readers, oh lights of my life, you things. I have a question for you. And I realize this isn't conventional procedure in most film reviews, but I just need to know something, because I have a cautionary advisory to share.

Understand? Good. Here's the question: are you a teenage girl, aged seventeen and younger?

If so, then like, you should, like, totally just click over to another article, girlfriend. Because, like, I totally have like NOTHING that's too good to say about The Beach. Totally. Like. So just head over to like some interview or something, and like, I'll talk to you later. 'Kay? 'Kay!

Are we alone now? Good.

The Beach sorta blows, and it sorta blows because it's made to cater to teenage girls who are gonna inevitably get a bit damp contemplating their fantasy boy Leo DiCaprio hustlin' around the pot fields of Thailand in just a pair of shorts, his hairless chest glistening with theoretical lust in the damp tropical air. They had a great book by Alex Garland to work with, and they had a great production team in Danny Boyle and his boys--also known as the Trainspotting troika--and they even had a great actor in Leo, because as much as folks rag on the guy for being a teenybopper pretty boy, he's a great film actor. What they lacked was the balls to make a great movie using these elements. Instead, they phoned up a cheap and new hot girl, wrote up some love scenes for her and the Leomeister, and let the rest fall where it may.

You can almost physically feel the gears shift when the Leo-centric teenybopper parts of the movie segue into the grown-up artsy-fartsy parts of The Beach. Because, y'know, it's based on a BOOK, a grown-up book and everything, so they had to put in parts that would maybe excite grown-ups a bit, especially grown-ups who read the book. It's like when a teen idol gets really old and you can sorta see parts of the hottie he used to be written in the trenches of his face, just like Leo will someday; you can sorta see parts of the greatness of the book in the pukey mess that is The Beach, but it's not enough to get even the most die-hard fan of the book excited. It's just pieces.

In The Beach, Leo portrays Richard, an American traveling through Thailand who is given a mysterious map to a mythical paradise by an equally mysterious crazy guy named Daffy Duck (Robert Carlyle). Because he's starved for real adventure, he recruits Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen) and Etienne (Guillaume Canet) to join him in finding the paradise island, and they do.

Up until then, the movie works just fine. Once they hit the island in the book, you get an engaging depiction of this new community and you get to watch Richard slowly disintegrate into a numb monster. But in the movie, once they hit the island, Leo does a lot of posturing and fucking. Then he goes crazy, and the movie actually hits its only stride--but you have to sit through all the posturing and fucking to get to the good stuff. (Not that Ms. Ledoyen's naked wet breasts don't count as "good stuff." They most assuredly do.)

What you have in The Beach is your typical Hollywood screw-up. They gotta muck around with what works. The narrative and characters were all there in the book; the filmmakers have shown they're capable of depicting madness onscreen in a provocative way; Leo's a great actor who seems to genuinely want to take chances. Instead of taking any, though, he and his movie play the safe route until it's over. It's more like an investment than anything you'd call "art." Unless you're the kind of person who considers Leonardo DiCaprio's naked chest to be a thing of beauty, in which case it's as close to art as you'll ever find, and you can have it.