Ritorno alla laguna blu

RETURN TO THE BLUE LAGOON, made 11 years after the successful first film, is one of those movies that's happy to reprise the plot of the original while adding a few twists and tweaks of its own. It's an entirely superfluous kind of film that sees yet another couple of kids washed up on a desert island and having to fend for themselves against nature and their fellow man.

There are a few differences here - the adult with them is a woman, the boy is the son of the couple from THE BLUE LAGOON, they're staying in the same place so make use of the already-there house, etc. - but none of them make a difference. Once again the film is all about puberty, isolation, love and family, except as it's not original it feels like a lukewarm rehash of the first movie.

The acting doesn't really sit right either. The age gap between Milla Jovovich and Brian Krause is too obvious, and Krause is as equally wooden as Christopher Atkins before him. Jovovich definitely has something feral within her, but less use is made of that as in THE FIFTH ELEMENT, which handled her unique qualities perfectly. Director William A. Graham made a career of TV movies and although RETURN TO THE BLUE LAGOON had a theatrical release, it feels very much like a second-rate outing in every respect.