The Blue Lagoon (1980) [R] ***

A film review by Jeffrey Kaufman for blu-ray.com on Dec. 13, 2012.

There's a kind of general consensus that we live in a libertine age, one with unbridled sexuality being foisted on us by the mass media and a certain prurience at work in even our day to day interests. Of course some forty or fifty years ago tongues were wagging about the so-called Sexual Revolution, so this consensus is certainly nothing new. It might still surprise some, however, to realize that the source novel for the oft-filmed The Blue Lagoon, a story about a young boy and girl being stranded on a South Pacific island and slowly becoming sexually aware as they grow into adolescence, actually came out in the seemingly staid and stolid early years of the twentieth century, a time most of us think of as being seriously prim and proper and in a way completely asexual. Henry De Vere Stacpoole was an Irish physician who spent quite a bit of his early career as a ship's doctor, sailing to exotic locations and gaining a first-hand knowledge of the South Pacific and its many sparsely inhabited islands. Stacpoole also wrote a number of charming children's stories, and some may have initially thought that The Blue Lagoon was geared to the same audience, especially since its two main characters are kids and, later, adolescents themselves. But of course The Blue Lagoon is a rather frank exploration of budding human sexuality divorced from the morés of polite society, and as such one might assume it raised many an eyebrow when it was published in 1908. No major clamor really seems to have arisen, as surprising as that may seem to us now, and in fact Stacpoole was able to develop a sort of mini-franchise with the property, churning out a couple of sequels in the ensuing years. The Blue Lagoon remained Stacpoole's most successful literary effort, and perhaps as surprising as its success in the first decade of the last century is the fact that it was adapted for film as early as 1923, at the height of the silent era. In 1949 a British version was made with a then very young Jean Simmons, but it wasn't until 1980 that the ostensibly libertine tendencies of both society at large and Hollywood in particular allowed the novel to be filmed in something relatively close to its original form. Stacpoole had hedged his prurient bets by framing his story of natural love as a sort of allegory, with frequent none too subtle references to Adam and Eve. But let's face it: a lot of the appeal of The Blue Lagoon is built around the idea of seeing two extremely attractive teens discovering what their naughty bits are made for, and indulging in the carnal pleasures of the flesh.

There's something more than a little funny on one of the trailers for The Blue Lagoon, a bit of press hype that's repeated in some of the marketing materials for the film, which first announce that the film is coming from Randal Kleiser, the director of Grease (as if somehow that would deliver a built in demographic for this film) and that it would be a sensual story of natural love. And that gives away the whole ballgame right there, folks, despite both Stacpoole's and screenwriter Douglas Day Stewart's attempts to clean up the salacious content with Biblical references. This is at its most base a film about teenagers getting their freak on, and as such, it provides enough titillation to satisfy most with an interest in that angle, while at the same time diverting attention with a number of sidebars that attempt to convince the viewer they're actually experiencing Meaningful Art.

Few would probably argue that either Brooke Shields or Christopher Atkins deliver Oscar caliber performances in The Blue Lagoon, and in fact a lot of the film is kind of ham-handed from an acting standpoint. In fact the two younger actors who portray their characters in the first part of the film (Elva Josephson and Joseph Kohan) are arguably more convincing than their older counterparts. But the main selling point of this film, aside from its titillating aspect, is its lush setting, and in that regard, this is certainly one of the most gorgeously shot films of its era, courtesy of the stunning cinematography of Nestor Almendros, which did indeed receive an Oscar nomination.

Most of us have probably dreamed of being washed up on a remote deserted island (at least until Cast Away and Lost came along) and The Blue Lagoon obviously plays into the fantasy with the added allure of its sexual content. Who wouldn't want to be a gorgeous youth stranded on an incredibly beautiful island with another gorgeous youth? You can stuff in as much nonsense about forbidden fruit (figurative and literal), Natural Man, and anything else, but at the end of the day it boils down to that oldest force in the world, sexual attraction, not just between two people, but the countless millions who are watching them, enthralled.

Labels: adventure, drama, romance
IMDb 58/100
MetaScore (critics=31, viewers=65)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=33, viewers=68)
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