Remember that old question “if you were to be left on a deserted island with only one other person, who would it be?”. Well, after this turkey, not Madonna, that’s for sure. I hate to pile on, but this is one really, really bad movie.

Madonna plays a rich , snobby, spoiled, irritating brat who ends up stuck on that deserted island with this Italian fisherman played by a guy named Adriano Giannini. Never heard of him? Lucky for him. He had no reputation to kill. I couldn’t decide whose acting was worse – Madonna’s or this guy’s.

I’ll back up a little and give you some info. Madonna and her quiet, nice guy husband charter a boat to sail from Greece to Italy. So there is a crew and this Italian guy is part of it. From the first scene in this movie, Madonna is a bitch. For over the first half of this movie she’s whining, complaining and making those nasty faces. Of course, the crew, in particular the Italian guy, is taking the brunt of it. His name is Pepe – but Madonna calls him “Pee-Pee”. Pretty witty, isn’t it? He curses her behind her back and she continues to torture him. Except most of the torture is really inflicted on us, the viewing public.

This goes on long past the point that somebody should have already killed them both, but it goes on until the two find themselves all alone on that island. It’s bad enough we have the cliché known as the “deserted island”, but on top of that, they are, of course, going to find love.

That’s when things go from annoying to plain weird. Pepe decides that in order to make Madonna see the world in a better light, he has to beat her. Not that I’m complaining- if anyone deserved a beating, it’s this character played by Madonna. But the way it evolves from S&M to total romance is kind of revolting. To make matters worse, in between the beatings, the movie is plain boring. They fill in with little music video scenes showing the two on their own exploring the island for food and water. Very exciting. I saw more action from that volleyball Tom Hanks played with in “Castaway”.

When Madonna and Pepe do speak, it’s grating. Madonna’s character is simply not to be believed, even for a rich bitch. “Whine, whine, whine”. Her best insult to Pepe is to call him a mongrel dog. But the Pepe guy – his lines are mostly the over the top kind such as “what did you do that for?”, or “what’s the matter with you?” Honestly, you get a better performance from the guy who used to say “Mama mia, that’s a spicy meatball!”

Which brings me back to the main question – why would anybody make this movie? It’s a remake of a foreign film from the ‘70’s. What’s worse is that Madonna has even managed to drag down the reputation of her husband, the director of this mess, a guy by the name of Guy Ritchie. He has made a few good tough guy movies such as “Snatch” and “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”.

I’ve read that the problem is that no one can tell Madonna what to do – what movies to make or how to act in them. I guess it’s true. Only Dan Ackroyd has as bad a record in my book. So it continues to be true that maybe you can’t have it all. That is, an incredible music career, a husband, two kids and some pretty good movies made. Sorry, Madonna, time is up. I give “Swept Away” a “1.0” because “one” thing it has going for is that it is only eighty five minutes long.