The Blue Lagoon (R)
IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; Sony Pictures; TCM; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; iTunes; Max; Movies Anywhere; Vudu; YouTube

This came out in 1980, but I didn't see it until 2013. It's actually based on a book from 1908, though I didn't know that until I started writing this review when I finally watched the movie. There's a sequel from 1991, Return to the Blue Lagoon, that I must have seen on TV or VHS or something, in the early 90s. It's apparently an adaptation of a book that was a sequel to the original book, which of course I also didn't know... I just knew that movie was a sequel to this movie. Anyway, I always thought I should eventually get around to watching this, and now I have.

Anyway, the movie starts out on a ship that's on its way to San Francisco, but it's been blown off course, so it's somewhere in the South Pacific. (I have no idea where the ship was coming from.) One of the passengers is a man named Arthur Lestrange (played by William Daniels, aka KITT, aka Mr. Feeny). He's traveling with his young son, Richard, and a young girl named Emmeline. (She calls him "uncle," though the movie doesn't really make it clear to me whether he's actually her uncle, or just her guardian, since the death of her parents. But the internet makes it clear that he's her uncle, and that Richard is her cousin. Personally I'd rather pretend not to know that.) Anyway, there's a fire on the ship, and Arthur and some other people get on one life boat, while Richard, Emmeline, and a cranky old cook named Paddy Button get on another. And the boats quickly get separated.

So... Paddy and the two kids end up on an island, where he teaches them a bit about survival. Also he seems to discover that there are dangerous natives on the other side of the island, though that isn't made explicit until much later in the movie. For now, he just tells the kids never to go to the other side, because the Bogeyman lives there. Anyway, we see all three of them living on the island for awhile, but before too long, Paddy dies. And then Richard rows himself and Em to a nearby island, I guess. And then, in the midst of one of the kids' naked swims together, they're suddenly naked teens. (Em is now played by Brooke Shields, who was 14 at the time, and Richard is played by Christopher Atkins, who I think was 18. But Em's nude scenes had older body doubles.)

Um... so anyway, some people will call the movie "soft core porn," and I can see why they think that, but... that aspect of the movie just wasn't important to me. I think it's easy enough to just concentrate on the story, which is basically about two kids coming of age. In fact it's about the purest example of a coming of age story you'll ever see, considering they came from a time when kids didn't learn the facts of life anywhere near as young as they do these days, which means when the facts of life intruded upon their own lives with no one around to explain it to them... well, they just had to figure it out for themselves. You think your puberty was confusing... well, you're wrong. Richard and Emmeline's, now that was confusing. Anyway, it's hard for me to like the movie that much, because the characters aren't that great, nor is the plot. But they (the kids and the story) were at least okay. There was some passable humor and drama. Mostly, though, I managed to find the movie interesting by looking at it as a sort of anthropological study, or something. Though it's really kind of surprising just how long it took them to discover sex... there were plenty of times when they seemed close to figuring it out, but didn't. But eventually they did, of course. And even after that... there were other surprises in store for them.

I guess that's all I want to say about the plot, so there's a fair amount I'm leaving out. But the end of the movie seems kind of tragic, but it's ambiguous. I will say that throughout the movie, there were a lot of shots of the tropical flora and fauna and whatnot. And um... maybe I'm forgetting stuff I meant to say, I dunno.