RETURN TO THE BLUE LAGOON

'''Return to the Blue Lagoon''' is a 1991 English language romance and adventure film starring Milla Jovovich and Brian Krause, produced and directed by William A. Graham. The screenplay by Leslie Stevens was based on the novel ''The Garden of God'' by Henry De Vere Stacpoole. The film was marketed with the tagline "Return to the Romance, Return to the Adventure..."
The film tells the story of two young children marooned on a tropical island in the South Pacific. Their life together is blissful, but not without physical and emotional changes, as they grow to maturity and fall in love. The film has major thematic similarities to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve.
The original music score was composed by Basil Poledouris. The film's closing theme song "A World of Our Own" is performed by Surface featuring Bernard Jackson. The music was written by Barry Mann, and the lyrics were written by Cynthia Weil.

Contents

Plot summary

Cast

Reception

Nominations

DVD details

Background and production

Trivia

External links

Plot summary

In the Victorian period, Mrs. Sarah Hargrave, a beautiful widow, and two young children are cast off from the ship they are travelling on. After days afloat, a sailor tries to kill the children, but Sarah kills him, feeding him to the deep. They later arrive and are stranded on a beautiful tropical island in the South Pacific. Sarah tries to raise them to be civilized, but soon gives up, as the orphaned boy Richard was born and raised by young lovers on this same island, and he influences the widow's daughter Lilli. They grow up, and Sarah educates them from the Bible, as well as from her own knowledge, including the facts of life. She cautiously demands the children never to go to the forbidden side of the island.
When Richard and Lilli are about eight, she dies, leaving them to finish raising themselves. Together, they survive solely on their resourcefulness, and the bounty of their remote paradise. Years later, both Richard Lestrange and Lilli Hargrave grow into tall, strong, and beautiful young adults. They live in a house on the beach and spend their days together fishing, swimming, and exploring the island. Both their bodies mature and develop, and they are physically attracted to each other. Richard loses the child's play Easter egg hunt and dives to find Lilli an adult's pearl as her reward. His penchant for racing a lagoon shark sparks a quarrel; Lilli thinks he is foolhardy, but the liveliness makes Richard feel virile.
Lilli awakens in the morning with her first period, just as Sarah described the threshold of womanhood. Richard awakens in the morning with a condition not uncommon to men who dreams of intimate encounters. One night, he goes off to the forbidden side of the island, and discovers its origins there. A group of natives from another island use the shrine of an impressive, Kon-Tiki-like idol to sacrifice conquered enemies every full moon. Richard camouflages himself with mud and hides in the muck; meanwhile, Lilli worries about his disappearance. Richard escapes unscathed, though not unseen, by a lone native who may think he is a god. Ultimately, after making up after a fight, Richard and Lilli discover natural love and passion, which deepens their bond. They fall in love, and exchange formal wedding vows and rings in the middle of the jungle. From then on, they consummate their affections for each other quite often for several months. Then Lilli begins to feel sick, and will not make love with Richard or eat breakfast anymore.
Soon after, a ship arrives at the island, carrying unruly sailors, a stuffy captain, and his beautiful daughter Sylvia Hilliard. They offer to bring them back to civilization, after many years in isolation. Sylvia tries to steal Richard from Lilli and seduce him, but as tempted as he is by her strange ways, he realizes that Lilli is his heart and soul, upsetting Sylvia. Richard leaves Sylvia behind in the middle of the fish pond, in plain view of the landing party, allowing her to get caught. Meanwhile, a sailor ogles Lilli in her bath, drags her back to the house, and tries to rape her and steal her pearl, before Richard comes to her rescue. Richard is forced to lure the sailor to his death on the tidal reef, or be killed by him. He apologizes to Lilli for hurting her, and she reveals that she is pregnant. But things come to no good for Sylvia; she is being taken back to the ship, under arrest. At last, the ship departs and the two young lovers prefer to stay on the island, and have their baby girl they named Sarah.

Cast

Actor	Role
Milla Jovovich	Lilli Hargrave
Brian Krause	Richard Lestrange
Lisa Pelikan	Mrs. Sarah Hargrave
Courtney Barilla	Young Lilli
Garette Ratliff Henson	Young Richard
Emma James	Infant Lilli
Jackson Barton	Infant Richard
Nana Coburn	Sylvia Hilliard
Brian Blain	Captain Jacob Hilliard
Peter Hehir	Quinlan
Alexander Peterson	Giddens
John Mann	First Captain
Wayne Pygram	Kearney
John Dicks	Penfield
Gus Mercurio	First Mate
John Turnbill	Dawes
Todd Rippon	Gullion
John Keightley	Lestrange
Pita Degei	Chief
Mikaele Nasau	Lone Cannibal
Annabel E. Graham	Infant Sarah

Reception

Nominations

★ '1991 Golden Raspberry Awards'
:'Nominee:' Worst Director - William A. Graham
:'Nominee:' Worst New Star - Milla Jovovich
:'Nominee:' Worst New Star - Brian Krause
:'Nominee:' Worst Picture - William A. Graham
:'Nominee:' Worst Screenplay - Leslie Stevens

★ 'Young Artist Awards'
:'Nominee:' Best Young Actress Starring in a Motion Picture - Milla Jovovich

DVD details

★ Release date: November 5, 2002

★ Digitally mastered audio and video

★ Remastered in high-definition

★ Full screen presentation

★ Available audio tracks: English, Portuguese

★ Available subtitles:
:English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese

★ Theatrical trailers:
:''Return to the Blue Lagoon'', ''Mr. Deeds''

★ Running time: 101 minutes

Background and production

★ This film is a sequel to the 1980 remake ''The Blue Lagoon'', starring Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins. ''Return to the Blue Lagoon'' bears a strong similarity to the original film, which was produced and directed by Randal Kleiser. It is almost nothing like ''The Garden of God'', Stacpoole's sequel to his ''Blue Lagoon'' novel. However, in the second sequel ''The Gates of Morning'', a pair of sailors attack the people of a nearby island because they know its waters are rich with pearls, and it is possible the filmmakers used this.

★ This film picks up from where the original ''Blue Lagoon'' left off. Richard is the child of Richard and Emmeline Lestrange of the original film, who both are revealed to be dead at the beginning and are buried at sea. The new shipwreck occurred mere days after they were found.

★ Character actor Gus Mercurio is the only cast member of this film who also appeared in the original ''Blue Lagoon'' eleven years earlier. He played the ship's officer who found Richard and Emmeline, and gave the ambiguous line, "No, sir. They are just sleeping," when asked in the original film if they were dead.

★ This film was shot on location in Australia and Taveuni, Fiji.

Trivia

★ Despite the adult content of this film, including partial nudity (controversially, from a fifteen-year-old Milla Jovovich) and sexual themes, when ''Return to the Blue Lagoon'' was released to home video, it was promoted in North America as a family film suitable for all ages.

★ Although many of the film's elements were derived from the 1980 ''Blue Lagoon'' film, and there was some nudity, the film was much more sanitized in content than its predecessor, and was able to garner a PG-13 rating in the United States.

★ The DVD version of this film is reframed to cut out Milla Jovovich's breasts in the scene where she's looking at herself in the mirror. The older VHS version showed her nipples at the very bottom of the screen.

★ Milla Jovovich's starring role in this film as Lilli Hargrave led to comparisons between her and another child model-turned-actress, none other than Brooke Shields (who had starred in the original film as Emmeline Lestrange).

★ This was Milla Jovovich's and Brian Krause's first film (Jovovich went on to star in the 1997 science fiction film ''The Fifth Element''; Krause went on to join the cast of the fantasy television series ''Charmed'').

★ This was actor Brian Blain's last film before his death of a heart attack in 1994. This was also actor Peter Hehir's last film before his seven year absence from the screen (Hehir eventually returned in the 1998 drama film ''The Boys'', shortly before he retired from acting).

External links

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