Underrated

Agreed, this was a brilliantly directed movie. The feeling of adventure and excitement the director instills in you at the beginning, the near perfect placement of the great music of the time, the sense of euphoria you feel along with the characters. Yes Richard is a little American brat which is so common today, but it wasn't so common then. People weren't such immoral opportunists. Number 1 rule was never ever to go after another man's girl. In the book this doesn't happen however it is because the director followed the story in the book is the reason it decays so badly towards the end. It's really a metaphor for humans in the Garden of Eden and tourism in general. They find paradise and utopia and just have to mess it all up by the end. I'm glad the director deviated from the book with Francoise and Richard's affair. It could only have been made better/more realistic if Francoise wasn't with Entiene.

I just saw it for the first time. It's not great but it's not nearly as awful as people make it out to be. I think the issue comes down to a few things:
1) This is primarily known nowadays as the movie that wrecked Danny Boyle's relationship with Ewan McGregor and while they've made up now, it's difficult to separate all the behind the scenes drama that happened from the film itself. There's also the issue that the filming apparently caused damage to the beach, so much so that the film-makers were successfully sued for damages.

2) At the time, there was a huge post-Titanic backlash happening against Leonardo DiCaprio (like...as bad and possibly even worse than the hate Justin Bieber got when he first came along). People who hated him because of his popularity automatically hated this movie without even needing to see it (especially when the casting issue became public knowledge) and the people who'd loved him in things like Romeo + Juliet and Titanic weren't sure about this because it was really the first time he was playing someone who spends most of the movie being a fundamentally unlikable person.

3) Danny Boyle was just starting to cross the line from "cult" to "mainstream" in terms of his films and filming style. Trainspotting was a big hit in the UK and was a cult film internationally. The Beach was basically trying to be the best of both worlds and, at the time, it failed in pleasing either camp.

4) It's a very cynical film primarily populated with generally unlikable people - again, nothing new from Danny Boyle but with regards to mainstream films particularly of the turn of the millenium, having the main character be a selfish pretentious jerk who lies pretty much all the time and breaks up an apparently perfectly happy relationship to be with a girl who he then cheats on was a hard sell. Even now you'll find people complaining when characters in a movie are unlikable and it was even worse back then.