38th Worst Movie: Swept Away

“Swept Away” Starring Madonna
Directed by Guy Ritchie

As I Crept Away…
By Michele Dillon

I had a very similar experience watching this movie as I did the movie Glitter. Now I know, this was not Madonna’s first movie and that she wowed everyone in Evita, but that does not mean that she is or ever will be a professional actress. I would give her the tip of “stick to your day job”…but her day job is singing and I am not a big fan of that either. I wonder what this woman could be really talented at but just hasn’t given it a shot yet. I will make that my next life goal, to find this out for her…but I it will have to be moved to the bottom of the list because I have way too many other things to worry about right now…one of them being, that I still have very many more movies to watch and I don’t find myself enjoying them any more as the months go on.

So I was actually more disgusted by the plot of this movie then by any of the acting or anything else for that matter. The concept was this; Madonna is this rich snob (which was very believable but I’m sure there was no strain needed for that) who goes on a boat trip cruise with her husband and four of her friends. The cruise ends up being not up to her desires so she decides to berate the crew and the captain and make them feel like pieces of shit the entire time. She particularly enjoys picking on one of the Italian crew members and calls him Pee-Pee the whole time instead of Pepe. One day on the cruise, Madonna (which it’s really sad that I cannot even remember her characters name, that’s how non- invested I was) has Pepe take her in a motorized boat to shore so she can join her husband in exploring a cave. As any person who can predict the plots of bad movies, which I have started to become really good at, the next thing that happened was very foreseeable, the motor on the boat dies in the middle of the ocean and they have no rows so they are forced to wait for someone to find them. Days go by and no one finds them, but for some reason my hope for them still lingered…only to be dashed by the boat sinking and them washing up on a deserted island. This is where the plot got gross, weird and completely unwatchable. It becomes clear on the island that Madonna, being the rich snob that she is, cannot fend for herself. She cannot find shelter, food or even water. But of course, Pepe can because he is handyman of sorts. As soon as he sees Madonna’s weakness that she cannot provide for herself, he turns the table on her and forces her to live by his rules if she wants to eat and drink and be happy. He calls her names, he hits her, and he orders her around to no end only to wait for her to think she can start eating but then demand her to do something else first. This goes on for quite awhile. Then there is one scene where it looks like he might end up raping her. He gets her all the way stripped down (and no, for anyone who thinks Madonna is a MILF, I didn’t see anything) but then he spits in her face and says “No, I will wait for you to fall in love with me”. By this point, I was completely disgusted…I couldn’t comprehend what was going to happen next…Madonna actually falls in love with the horrible guy. At first, it seems as she is just faking it so she can eat and drink water when she wants but as it progresses it becomes clear that no, we are to believe that she has fallen in love with this Italian creep. Then the rest of the movie, which seemed like it was longer than King Kong the remake, is about their disgusting yucky relationship and right when you think you cannot handle it anymore, they are rescued and Madonna goes back to her old way of life and he goes back to his…it was about the dumbest idea that I could have ever encountered in my life…I don’t understand why Guy Ritchie would let this movie come to life just to showcase his wife…it totally made me want to rethink whether or not I even liked the movie Snatch…which was very difficult because damn, that is a good movie…but anyway, there you have it. I realize this is probably the first time I have ever gone into such detail about the plot, and left most of my jokes out the window, but I really was dumbfounded by the movie and wanted everyone to understand how this movie made me feel afterwards, which was dirty and empty inside…I was almost considering watching a movie with Hilary Duff in it, just so I could understand the meaning of sweet, innocent (however, annoying) people again…ALMOST.