Paradis

Okay, I admit it. The only reason I rented this film was to see the gorgeous Phoebe Cates and those nude scenes which seemed to have gained more fame (or infamy?) than the actual film itself.

As many others have pointed out, this film borrows heavily from the Blue Lagoon but somehow manages to strip the emotion and warmth out of the formula.

I wandered through this movie totally oblivious to the death of the parental characters and I audibly yawned when Joffrey the minder died. Too much time is spent wasted on ridiculously stupid chimp scenes which one could over-intellectualise and proclaim as being a raw and uninhibited metaphor of the lives of Sarah and David, but in reality are there for cheap gags. As a result the movie seems too short even though you get the distinct feeling you have been sitting, watching it for a long time.

The continuity and time-span of Paradise seems horribly distorted. By the end of the movie you would swear that the two "cast-aways" had been lost out in the desert sea for no more than a couple of weeks. However, when Sarah conceives a child (towards the end of the movie) and she feels it kick in her womb (perhaps 20 minutes later) , you realise that the time span of the movie has been horribly compressed. As a result, I was left feeling baffled and rather surreal. There was no sense of extended isolation, self discovery or sincere empathy towards the characters as they never really seem to be in danger. Similarly, Paradise does not, nay cannot emulate the irony of Return to the Blue Lagoon, where Civilization is portrayed as the great destroyer or unmaker. The characters in The Blue Lagoon are wholly dependent on their little island, where as the oasis in Paradise seems like nothing more than a stop-over enroute. It's sad that it is nothing more than a rip off of The Blue Lagoon that misses the critical factors that made The Blue Lagoon so good.... but that's what it is.

In reality there is only one reason why you would want to watch this movie, and that is for the nude scenes of Phoebe Cates.. and trust me, they give the movie legs.

The first movie starring Phoebe Cates. She was a different kind of a star. This movie put her on the maps. She's definitely cute in this movie which is the attraction for the age group the movie was made for.

The movie is the '80s creation that included many teen oriented movies of that decade. It's pretty harmless, and out of the many teen actors of that era, Phoebe Cates was definitely one of the best looking.

That's about all there is to this movie. Producers must have thought that this is a bankable movie following the Blue Lagoon's format. The way they were dressed were almost a carbon copy of Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins in that movie.

I have to admit that we did get to see what we wanted to see, and that is Phoebe Cates in all her natural glory. Just for that it was worth the price of the ticket.

Like most of the others, I found a lot of this movie rather trite. I don't blame Aames or Cates for this; I thought they were good actors who did their best with terrible material. The plot is something straight out of a trashy romance novel, which could have worked with better writing but the script is a mess. However, lost in this mediocre feature film is a great 30 minute soft-core porn. The sex scenes are highly erotic, and the nude scenes are done with much better camera work and production than you would typically have in a skin flick. I'm particularly fond of the cave shower scene, where Phoebe Cates positively scorches the camera with her hotness.

The only two reasons to watch this movie are on Phoebe Cates chest. This is better than the movie it copies "Blue Lagoon", but that is saying very little. The best way to watch this movie is to have your finger on fast forward. There is a lot of wasted time that will put you to sleep. Unless you are specifically interested in seeing the the reasons previously mentioned, don't bother with this mess.

Phoebe Cates made her screen debut with TV teen heartthrob Willie Aames in Paradise, a landlocked Blue Lagoon with unfriendly Arabs lurking on the borders of Paradise. It's definitely got some nice nude shots of both young performers to gratify the prurient.

The two young people are in Bagdad of 1823 then part of the Ottoman Empire and governed rather loosely from Istanbul. Cates is with her guardian who is your proper British official and Aames is the son of a bible thumping reverend and his wife. All of these people haven't a clue about where they're at, just an exaggerated sense of western superiority.

But the beautiful and nubile Cates has caught the attention of a sheik who's in the slave trade. He could get some good bucks for her or keep her as private stock. He and his people ambush the caravan, but the kids escape and come to a hidden oasis where they set up and play house.

The similarities to the Blue Lagoon are rather obvious even in the looks of the protagonists. But whereas those kids had been shipwrecked on their island since they were still in single digits in The Blue Lagoon, in Paradise these two young people already know the facts of life, it's just that they have that Protestant Christian upbringing.

The film was shot in Israel and the scenery is magnificent with and without Aames and Cates. Given that Aames is now a born again Christian he probably wants those male nude shots off the market, so hang on to your DVDs and VHSs.