Christopher Atkins and Brooke Shields (Everett Collection)
FRESH WATER: Indiana Evans and Brenton Thwaites take the place of Christopher Atkins and Brooke Shields (inset) in Lifetime’s “Blue Lagoon: The Awakening.” (
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If you loved the old “Blue Lagoon” for sure, you’ll hate the new one.
However if you hated the old one, you may love Lifetime’s new original movie, “Blue Lagoon: The Awakening,” which debuts Saturday night.
As embarrassing as it is to admit, you can count me in group two. Hated the old, really like the new. That being said, it’s entirely possible that I’m experiencing brain rot and soon I’ll be dribbling and screaming lines from “Scarface.”
To bone up on the new movie, I got up Janet Maslin’s review of the Brooke Sheild’s original movie which debuted almost 32 years ago to the day.
That one, which is on TV — a lot — is so terrible that it isn’t even bad funny, which is why I never got through it.
In the new movie, we also have two impossibly good-looking teens who get stranded on a deserted island.
Here, they are overachieving, popular, virgin Emma Robinson and slacker, loner, not-virgin Dean McMullen. They are played by impossibly gorgeous Australians, Indiana Evans and Brenton Thwaites.
Unlike in the old movie, these kids don’t get stranded as toddlers and somehow end up living in a duplex hut with wrap-around porch.
Instead, they get stranded on a high-school trip that their class has taken to the Caribbean.
Somehow, under the noses of their teachers, (Christopher Atkins from the original is now the teacher!), the whole class sneaks out of the hotel and boards a party boat.
Emma falls overboard when the cops come to raid the party boat.
Since Dean is the only one who notices, he jumps in after her and gets her aboard the dinghy tied to the big boat.
Cut to the chase: They are stranded at sea and fall asleep from exhaustion.
When they wake, they see an island in the distance and row through the waves and rocks to get to it. Why Club Med hasn’t invaded this place is hard to know.
Meantime, Dean’s dad and Emma’s family, especially her mother (Denise Richards, who really does look like the kid’s mother), are frantically trying to find them.
Weeks and weeks go by, and Emma and Dean start to become attracted to each other.
Look, if you have to be stranded on a deserted island, it’s best to be with someone who looks like they fell out of a Calvin Klein ad — right?
Forty-three minutes into the movie, they finally succumb to the call of nature. That nature.
Unlike the original where nudie scenes were followed by fornicating turtles (kill me!), here their “awakening” is tastefully done with nothing much showing except their emotions.
Look, it ain’t Lina Wertmüller’s “Swept Away” — it’s more like “Survivor: Paradise.”
Even so, I might be insane, but I enjoyed every silly minute.