Swept Away (2002)

No doubt, when Madonna and Guy Ritchie married, it was because they both thought it would help their movie careers. If you've been through the ordeal of watching "Swept Away," then you know at that level it was a match made in hell. After nearly 20 years of trying to become a respected actress (or "octress" as she might have pronounced it in "The Next Best Thing"), she still can't get out of herself long enough to turn in a performance that anyone with taste could even call decent. And that's the thing that makes people dislike her so much on the screen: that gut feeling that her ego is so inflated that it prevents her from being able to just let go and connect with her audience. If there's any justice in this universe, she just blew her last chance.

Fmovies: This is perhaps the worst movie I've ever seen, and I've seen Gigli. It is, however, unintentionally hilarious and as such is worth viewing with friends and some drinks while making jokes all the while- ala Mystery Science Theater.

At our party we made a game of it by taking a drink when certain things happened. Shot of Madonna's biceps? Everybody drink!

If you decide to do this and you want to get really hammered, try taking a drink every time Madonna says something in her fake British accent. You'll be drunk in no time and then - BONUS! - the movie won't seem as horrific as it really is.

This was visually a very pretty movie. The color of the ocean was so BLUE and the white sand beaches were so PRISTINE. The cinematography and tableaus created were so BREATHTAKING that the only pleasure one can derive fom this mess is an appreciation of the beaches in Sardinia. But all of that does not make up for a lack of plot or mischaracterizations of the protagonists. Madonna, who gets marooned on an island with a macho Italian steortypical guy reminded me of a petulant teenager. She related to her husband and Italain macho guy as a naughty teen would. No real depth of anything. The "funny" scenes were merely embarrassing. How could Guy Ritchie make something this bad? It doesn't make any sense after seeing Snatch and Lock, Stock. IT IS STOMACH CHURNING AWFUL people! I felt queasy with the slow motion fake-tears-chasing and the accompanying vertiginous piano: ping! ping! ping! This film was a romp on the beach with adults acting acting like thirteen year old dominant/submissives. (Madonna kissing macho's foot after she submits to him - bleh.)Most of the island scenes between these two adults were filmed like a home movie with the light shining on a worn out looking Madonna: "Look at me! See how buff and pretty I am! I can do push ups and dancie dance, and see how big my biceps are?" Oh my God. This was bad. Madonna doesn't act, she just plays herself. Just because she can cry on cue doesn't mean she is an actress.

Swept Away fmovies. I had the (mis)fortune to see this film at a showing in the US. Having reluctantly sat through the entire abysmal thing, I am shocked to have seen so many good reviews here on IMDB.

The original film was a turkey, but an interesting one. It fitted into that early seventies, post 1969 revolution thing; this film just stinks of....... , well, nothing really. It's that bad.

Imagine a badly done perfume commercial - see what I mean ?

Madonna never could act, and has been an embarrassment on the big screen for years. She looks worse and worse with every one of those years, increasingly coming to resemble a skinned meerkat.

Guy Ritchie, who has built his "reputation" on Lock Stock, could never direct either - his movies are shallow, badly cut, fashion shows. He doesn't disappoint here either; he wisely cast his wife as the star of this debacle.

Please people, take little heed of the good reviews this movie has received from other posters below. They are quite obviously business plants.

Don't encourage Ritchie to humiliate himself further by giving him money.

It's another Madonna film: does anyone really need to know more?

The only thing worse than Madonna trying to be funny is Madonna trying to be serious.

The only thing worse than being trapped on a desert island with Madonna is being trapped on a desert island with Madonna and a film crew.

In 2002, the only thing worse than Madonna in SWEPT AWAY was Robin Williams in DEATH TO SMOOCHY.

The only thing worse than watching Madonna in any movie is trying to come up with new ways of saying she can't act.

I almost saw this at an actual movie theatre (an art-house theatre, no less!) but couldn't make it there in the one whole week it played, but yesterday I finally saw it on cable and...well...I wasn't disappointed, that's for sure! Madonna has done it again: YET ANOTHER BOMB! When will this woman learn? When will the studios learn? (Or perhaps they already have, since this film was largely dumped, with little fanfare and deadly word-of-mouth.) One would hope that being directed by her talented husband, who's created some interesting and/or terribly entertaining work, would bring out the same quality Madonna showed in "Desperately Seeking Susan"; alas, it just isn't meant to be, for here she is, at her very worst: singularly convinced of her own greatness, the smugness permeating every frame she's in, made all the more unbearable by her wavering faux-British accent, an accent that only underscores the fact that her speaking voice is immature in quality and not especially pleasant. This may sound unnecessarily cruel but LISTEN to the woman, and LOOK at her films of, say, the past decade: like a latter-day Bette Davis, there is an unmistakable brittleness to not only her carriage but to her very face and body, which here, despite the warm photography displayed throughout the film (perhaps its only saving grace), are done no favors. To her credit, the entire affair is so misbegotten that one wonders if the world's greatest actress on her best day could do anything with this mess. No one involved escapes unharmed: Bruce Greenwood actually seems pained to be on-screen, though poor Jeanne Tripplehorn seems to carry herself as if she's actually in something good, which had me thinking all the while, "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt!" Adriano Giannini, son of Giancarlo Giannini, star of the Italian original, "Swept Away...", is, like his father before him, immensely attractive, and isn't altogether bad (despite winning a Razzie nomination for "Worst Actor"), but, like almost everything else about this production, it all comes back to Madonna, on whose shoulders rest the blame. Why her? Why not her husband, director Guy Ritchie? Just who do YOU think was behind this remake? What actress wouldn't want nearly every shot of a movie to be centered on her, with only a relative nobody sharing the screen? Oh sure, Ritchie deserves some blame: surely he - or someone - ANYONE! - should have, and could have, taken his lead aside and insisted on something bordering on ACTUAL FEELING in her line readings (for her performance is so wooden it's a surprise the rest of the cast didn't get splinters), or at least display a semblance of warmth...but she seems resistant to be anything but a cinematic black hole. Above and beyond anything else, this is strictly a vanity project for its star so she is ultimately accountable for it. A film like this, an "Odd Couple"-ish, war of the classes, should be light and fun, with leads who can bounce off one another with witty, even romantic, dialogue, for what else can a film whose plot involves two disparate people stranded, really be? Honestly, I don't think anyone involved knew exactly the tone they were trying for; it succeeds neither as comedy (I defy you to laugh even once) or romance (Madonna's ice-princess routine precludes ANY chemistry). It's not even bad enough for us bad-movie lovers to enjoy. A real shame...