Grade: D

Verdict: Every bit the cinematic shipwreck you'd imagine it to be.

Details: Starring Madonna and Adriano Giannini. Directed by Guy Ritchie. Rated R for language and some sexuality/nudity. 93 minutes.

See it: Local theaters and showtimes for Swept Away

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: "Swept Away" is every bit the cinematic shipwreck you'd imagine it would be.

But you can't blame it all on Madonna, even though this is her most wooden, self-conscious performance since "Shanghai Surprise." (Really, though, how do you choose just one?)

And you can't blame it all on her husband, writer-director Guy Ritchie, even though this completely lacks the imagination and spark of his two previous films, "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch."

You can, however, blame them as a collaborative unit.

With the two of them working together, there apparently was no system of checks and balances. It's as if no one sat with them and watched the dailies and said, "Well, that's not very good, now is it?"

You also can blame them for their choice in source material.

"Swept Away" is an extremely faithful remake of a 1974 Italian film of the same name, about a spoiled socialite named Raffaella who goes on a Mediterranean cruise and becomes stranded on a deserted island with Gennarino, a sailor she'd tormented on board. He beats her into submission, their roles reverse, and they fall in desperate, passionate love, only to have reality rip them apart once they're rescued.

None of this translates well nearly three decades later. Lines plucked directly from the original--such as "Your loins will burn with desire"--are laugh-out-loud funny when spoken, but were merely romance-novel cheesy in subtitled English.

And while the violence is toned down from the original (in which Gennarino tells Raffaella, "You're more beautiful when I hit you") Madonna's character, now named Amber, still takes a few smacks across the face from the brutish sailor, now named Giuseppe (Adriano Giannini, son of Giancarlo Giannini, who starred in the original). What poses as a device for building sexual tension merely feels misogynistic, unwarranted, out of date.

They bicker and call each other names. They fight over tiny pieces of fish and wrestle furiously in the sand. Eventually she forgets about her wealthy husband (Bruce Greenwood, who maintains some semblance of dignity, if only because his screen time is so limited). But the stranded couple are so annoying, so over-the-top in their anger toward each other, who cares if they fall in love?

Can't we just vote them off the island and be done with them?

When you strip away the vestiges of plot and character development, "Swept Away" is simply an excuse for Madonna to show off her tanned, yoga-trimmed body on the beach. (She even wears the same black bikini Mariangela Melato wore in the original.) And you have to give her credit--at 44, she's an amazing physical specimen, though her perpetual sneer makes it nearly impossible to look at her for prolonged periods of time.

Ritchie cut the film from two hours to about 90 minutes, yet he still eats up time with montages that feel like filler.

One of them is a dream sequence in which Amber dances and lip-syncs to Rosemary Clooney's "Come on-a My House," while magically whipping out items mentioned in the lyrics (an apple, a plum, a Christmas tree).

— Christy Lemire, The Associated Press