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Bringing the warm beach to your living room for over two decades

Fort Lauderdale must be beautiful this time of year, with warm sandy beaches and gorgeous people walking around practically naked. The folks at MTV know this, and we can watch the results right now, as spring break on MTV seems to last at least a month after you’ve started that damn Sophomore Inquiry class. Carson Daly is still in his hotel room waiting to hobnob with the stars from “American Pie” 1 and 2 and the cast members from the various WB dramas.

It is with much anticipation that thousands of college students from across the country, no wait, the world, continue to converge on the fair city to party. The whole extravaganza is taped and sent back to New York to be edited and given the once over before it is played on a continuous loop for about a month on MTV.

This year however, they had to party without yours truly. The absolute worst thing about spring break is the fact that every year this “music” station subjects the rest of the viewing public to the outlandish spectacle that is their idea of entertaining programming. Instead, I wasted my valuable time watching these great movies.

I set my heat lamp to extra hot and made way for some sexy fun. “The Blue Lagoon,” starring Brooke Shields as Em and Christopher Atkins as Richard, is a kind of erotic “Swiss Family Robinson” – only without the family.

Em and Richard are marooned on an island with only their wits to keep them alive. The two are about 10 or 12 when they survive a shipwreck and have to go it alone. The movie watches them blossom into two exceptionally good-looking castaways. This leads into their discovery of sex and everyone knows where that leads. The movie is not fantastic by any stretch of the imagination, but it is very pretty. The pristine beach and clear water make the whole thing worth the mediocre acting.

While I was in the tropical location mode I picked up “The Beach.” This film stars one of the biggest matinee idols in recent history, Leonardo DiCaprio. Leo plays Richard, (do I see a pattern?) an American tourist in Thailand. Richard is in search of a different kind of vacation, he doesn’t want the Americanized version of Asia. When he meets a French couple in a Bangkok hostel they join him in a journey to a secret beach.

This film is underrated, mostly due to the fact that Leo is in it. It was not surprisingly disparaged in the media because of the high profile of its star. The biggest mistake DiCaprio made in his career was the film “Titanic;” he will undoubtedly have a hard time regaining the artistic status he was beginning to enjoy before that film. Director Danny Boyle’s previous works include “Trainspotting” and “Shallow Grave,” both of which earned him critical accolades. This film does not disappoint and leaves an impression about the nature of civilization.

I finished up the spring break movie marathon with “Weekend at Bernie’s.” Just kidding, actually I watched “Return to Paradise” starring Joaquin Phoenix, Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche. I know you are thinking, “Anne Heche? What the hell?” I promise, this is a good movie. This is the only movie in which Ms. Heche is bearable.

She plays a lawyer on a mission to get Vaughn’s character to go back to Malaysia in order to keep Joaquin from hanging. Vince, Joaquin and some other guy were vacationing in Malaysia. When Vince and the other guy went home they left behind some hash that landed Joaquin in the slammer.

The idea of personal accountability when faced with the prospect of three years in a Malaysian prison makes this movie interesting. There are unfortunately no characters named Richard, but the cool factor goes up because Vaughn’s character’s first name is Sheriff.

Since I couldn’t get to the sleazy beach to frolic with the MTV generation, at least I had some fun at home watching movies.