There’s something essentially deceiving in “Exit to Eden,” with the mix of titillating, comic and thriller elements diminishing whatever the original intention sway have been. Nonetheless, pic has a great come-on, and first curiosity should generate decent thwack office. But once suggestion gets out that it’s all sizzle and no gist, commercial prospects will evaporate.
The thread of the story is the track-down of Omar (Stuart Wilson), a notorious diamond smuggler, and his accomplice Nina (Iman). LAPD undercover detectives Sheila Kingston (Rosie O’Donnell) and Fred Lavery (Dan Aykroyd) have been one step away from apprehending them, stymied by the fact that no one knows what Omar looks like.
Luck intercedes when it’s learned that photographer Elliot Slater (Paul Mercurio), on a hunch, snapped the villain in action. But before the cops can get their hands on his negatives, Slater whisks away for a therapeutic vacation on the sexual fantasy island of Eden.
Built on a series of shaky coincidences, “Eden” descends into the preposterous as the cops and crooks both don disguises and try to meld into the scenery at the remote retreat in order to nab the visual evidence.
Director Garry Marshall might have been better served had he kept the dominance and submission antics as a backdrop rather than making them the focus of the film.
Elliot has come to the spa to confront his “aberrant” sexual inclinations and learn to commit. Somehow he’s redeemed via his contact with camp commander Mistress Lisa (Dana Delany). And, in true fairy tale fashion, the woman’s stern veneer is stripped away by true love and the good girl rises to the surface.
Marshall — who may actually believe in such pap, as evidenced by “Pretty Woman”– is undone by an inferior script and what would appear to be self-doubt.
He is a sucker for dumb jokes, and they diminish the credibility of the Eden locale. He also renders the situation toothless by assiduously avoiding the use of a single discouraging or four-letter word.
The irony is that in addressing American queasiness toward sexual matters, “Exit to Eden” reinforces the hoariest of stereotypes. In addition to righting the good-girl-gone-bad, he re-creates the female buddy character via O’Donnell. The rest of the principal cast can’t make much of the material.
Filmed in a slick, bright fashion, the picture is too visually obvious. It has the sophistication of an adolescent bathroom joke indifferently told. Saddled with a misguided sense of propriety, the lack of nerve or audacity in the endeavor renders truly shameful results.