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Such a frustrating disappointment

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

I cannot understand how this movie has managed to get a 6.9 . Have the reviewers actually read Neville Shute's novel ?I was really looking forward to seeing this 2000 remake because On The Beach is a favourite of mine and have read the novel many times. The 1959 movie really did not do the tale any justice.However the tone of this movie, its pacing and script are just wrong. Too much time is spent on the sub and little time developing the characters.Special effects...appalling , corpses that were supposed to be two years old blinking. Did the radiation preserve the bodies ? San Francisco and the golden gate destroyed but Sausalito sparkles in the sun without a broken window.Worst of all is Dwight Towers and the changed ending. In the novel Moira sits ill behind the wheel, dying from radiation sickness abandoned. In this we have an ending which destroys the whole tone of the original novel. I do not really like remakes per se but we need a decent director to remake this blockbuster story but one which sticks to the characterisation and tone of the novel.If the novel needs extending in anyway then that should focus on the ways in which radiation sickness destroys the body. this movie did finally become involving once the sub arrived back in Melbourne but it was a long and dreary wait. 4/10 at best

On the Beach, a glorious filmic celebration of Nevil Shute's best known 1957 novel of the same name, righting the wrongs of the 1959 version, telling a story of love and disaster played out as the world slowly dies and hope is expelled. I wish I could write these words, instead …On the Beach is translated into millennium Australia, China and the USA have done the inevitable and bombed each other, the USA have sent their last horse to Australia …. No more plot.The acting is poor, stiff, unengaged, the soundtrack sounds as if it has been borrowed from the 1959 movie, the colorists got a bit over exited and made a somber film brilliant colour, the vision mixer got exited with his fades and mixes and the cinematographers got exited with their spinning shots. The suspense, the romanticism is missing and replaced by hapless Hollywood stories and lines we have all hearted another time.In the three hours it has taken to watch this movie I would suggest reading the book, perhaps as a TV mini series it was worthwhile, challenging, high budget but combined into a film it is poor, long and needs to be consigned to the shelf.

Quite frankly, I think that this television rethinking of Nevil Shute's superb, and very moving book is, for the most part, awful. The screenplay has, more or less, jettisoned all the tragic components, and appealing characters of Mr Shute's great novel, in favour of bringing the story up to date, so much so, that the producers might as well have commissioned an original story and screenplay. The 1959 version was, for the most part, much more faithful to the original novel than this sorry effort. 'Truth to tell, neither version does justice to the book, although at least Stanley Kramer's version tries it's best to capture the dignity and quiet heroism of the ordinary characters facing a tragic consequence. The only thing in favour of this rethink is that the facts are brought up to date and we are shown how the mob would react to the end of the world but, apart from that, I will stick to the original film version, despite nearly being driven to distraction with umpteen variations of a theme on Waltzing Matilda, and the terrible miscasting of Ava Gardner. And talking of miscasting, this TV version has more than it's fair share of that; Armand Assante, who has as much charm as the holocaust he is involved in, Rachel Ward who seems all at sea with her part and, like Miss Gardner, is totally wrong for the part of Moira and, surprisingly, the usually excellent Bryan Brown is another casualty of the miscasting department. A1, however, are the brilliant special effects; the scene of a devastated San Francisco makes one's jaw drop, the nuclear dust like falling snow, and the dead victims are the only memorable moments, and as for the end, ugh!!!! The scriptwriters should have been shot for writing such dross and slop, the ending in the book is much more powerful. Maybe one day someone will make a remake that does full justice to a magnificent novel that is just as timely today as it was in the late 1950's.

This Australian production was aired as a 4 hour film in the US on some cable networks. It should have gotten a wider viewing. It's tremendous. Based on Neville Shute's novel of nuclear Armageddon, it's got a lot of Aussie humor as well as some stark images, and it's far more graphic(people throwing up with radiation sickness) than the original film. It drives home the point-or pointlessness-of nuclear war far more than anything like The Day After done here. All of these films wound up being a little nostalgic of a time when we worried about nuclear war.( Now, thanks to Bush and his idiot cronies, we're worrying again, because he's effectively re-created the feeling of the Cold War by provoking war, and recently Russia, again to a more defensive stance. One wonders if these people could watch a film like this and it would make a difference. Bush and his minority of right wing-nut religious supporters sadly want "Armageddon" because to them, they're going to some afterlife and, it in turn creates-to them-a "Biblical" prophecy fulfilled-rant over). The film has stand-out performances from Armand Assante, Byran Brown and Rachel Ward, and without giving away spoilers(you know the general story) it's griping and graphic in spots, pulling no punches on the effect that impending nuclear radiation has on a society. Brown has some fun throw-away lines, and in one case he "steals" some art from the national gallery, only to realize, everyone else is...what's the point, who will survive to enjoy it.