Critic Reviews

Ritchie made a movie that never pretends to be more than a guilty pleasure of soft-core kitsch, and Madonna and Giannini (son of Giancarlo, costar of the original) achieve a lively S&M chemistry.

At its best, Swept Away is like a scrapbook of postcards starring two lovebirds with great tans.

Madonna herself is not so much terrible as merely uninvolving. She's quite credible as the harpy of the first act, but she can't pull off the transition and the spark that makes a movie star instantly sympathetic.

A simple misfire rather than a world-class fiasco. This misguided attempt to remake Lina Wertmuller's corrosive 1974 satire as a wistful romance is only unintentionally funny in the last reel.

Schizoid romantic comedy -- The first half of the movie is full of broad but capable comedy, but the original film's sexual and class politics are clumsily handled, and the mood turns serious with all the subtlety of a falling guillotine blade.

The effectiveness of this kind of issue-driven give and take relies heavily on casting, and Ritchie puts himself at a disadvantage: Madonna looks terrific in a bikini but she can't act, and the younger Giannini is stunt casting.

One hopes that this is Hollywood's last go-round with Swept Away. Watching this fiasco, I kept having nightmares about a possible cartoon version, co-starring Cruella de Vil and Shrek.

A bad movie. No amount of perfume sprayed on talk show audiences by Madonna and her husband can eliminate the stench of failure emanating from this motion picture.

The fact that Swept Away got made at all implies there simply is no dissuading Madonna from her movie-star aspirations. Her tenacity is admirable, but it's also block-headed.

Madonna may be better in this film than she's been in some of her recent endeavors, especially when she stops screeching her lines, but she's done herself no favors with her choice of material.