Who payed the critics

Am I Missing Something?

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Did you know the 1980 version of Blue Lagoon was a remake? I didn't, either. As it turns out, none other than the usually prudish Jean Simmons played in the original! Obviously, this version was a lot less filthy than the remake, and there wasn't any nudity, but for 1949, it was incredibly daring. Jean and her costar Donald Houston were practically clad in loincloths the entire movie, and the actor and actress who played them as children were actually topless during their island scenes.In case you don't know the story, two children and a deckhand survive a shipwreck in a tiny lifeboat. They find an uninhabited island, and while they don't give up hope of being rescued, they settle in and make a home. As the years pass and the children's hormones kick in, nature takes over and they start to notice each other.It's the proverbial fantasy, stranded on a desert island with the love of your life, but The Blue Lagoon is actually a pretty sad story. They were children when they were stranded, and it wasn't by choice. They miss their families and long for contact with the outside world. They have no idea where they are, and have very little hope of being found and rescued.Although it was very nasty for its time, and although it shows a completely different performance from Jean Simmons, I don't really recommend this one. The remake is just as sad, if not more so, but with a lot more nudity and sex, so I can't really recommend that one, either.DLM warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, there are some scenes in this movie that won't be your friend. The camera bobs about during the boat and canoe scenes, and it might make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

This is a beautiful film about the realities of innocence, which isn't really so helpless as it seems, as it sees the world with different eyes and see through it in many ways more clearly than the most experienced ones. James Hayter and Cyril Cusack, on the other hand, are quite hopeless at the mercy of their own villainy, walking into their own traps like stupid fools, and yet they know about the world and are not even uneducated.It's a fascinating and almost great story of the glory of innocence and a clear parallel to Robinson Crusoe, only here the second is not Friday but Jean Simmons, or rather, Donald Houston is sometimes her Friday.The music adds to it, the scenery is fantastic, there is a lot of tenderness as well, and it is filmed with great sensitivity. I was never disappointed by a film from Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat.

One of my favorite ballads is of British origin and it's If You Were The Only Girl In The World. It became popular in the Twenties right around the time that the silent British cinema came out with the first version of The Blue Lagoon. I didn't even know there was one until researching it only today. The song certainly could have served as a theme for all the versions.I can only compare this version to the one done by Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins that came out in 1980. That one of course had the full frontal nudity and the accompanying scandal, something that the high minded J. Arthur Rank would never have put into one of his films. Still Jean Simmons and Donald Houston are something to look at.This is another of those universal stories that everyone knows, a boy and girl shipwrecked at sea at the ages of 10 and 9 and stay for ten years on a desert island. At first one of the sailors from the boat they were on, Noel Purcell is shipwrecked with them. He apparently teaches them enough to survive because he dies and the kids have to fend for themselves. And as these are Edwardian era English kids they aren't exactly schooled in the facts of life. Never mind with her the only girl and him the only boy they figure it out. Besides the sensationalism the main difference between this and the Atkins/Shields version is that Simmons and Houston are thoroughly British and Chris and Brooke cannot be mistaken for anything, but Americans. Still the sexual tension is there as we know the first time we see them as adults. We know, but they have to figure it out.This version is dated in time because when they do get their first visitors in a pair of cutthroats played by James Hayter and Cyril Cusack they are identified as coming in the summer of 1914. Life does play funny tricks because soon enough there would be any number of British boys and girls who would love to be playing house in the south seas as opposed to being in the trenches in France and hearing bad news about a loved one there. And in researching The Blue Lagoon I learned there is yet another version coming out soon. Maybe that might give impetus to some film preservers to go to work on this one. It's a good film, but the color is pretty washed out and it needs a visit to the film labs.

I saw this movie as a child and i am longing to see it again. has it survived? I discount the 1980 version entirely as being fluff. I am sure that there are many that don't feel it is necessary to preserve these films. It is so unfortunate to discover a lost gem after it is gone. Young people today don't realize the hallucinatory quality and the impact on one's life a film seen in early youth can have in later life. This film, "the blue lagoon" had that effect on me. How many of us have wished to find ourselves in a place removed of the fears and chaos of the modern world. This was an idyllic story of a boy and girl castaway on a tropical island. there are troubles to be sure but in the end they fall in love and the have a baby. Life should be so simple and beautiful.