Let's make it clear right off that any film with Madonna in the lead carries so much cultural baggage that it's damn near impossible to believe her on the screen as anyone other than Madonna. She is, quite simply, too huge of an icon and usually featured in too big of a vanity project to even begin to disappear into a character. This has happened successfully a total of only three times in her acting career, and almost always in roles that seem to marry her persona with her role - Desperately Seeking Susan, Dick Tracy and Evita.

In her new film, Swept Away, Madonna almost falls into that category, but her performance, as Madonna/Amber leaves it hard to tell where the lines divide them. Her portrayal of the rich bitch wife of a multi-millionaire who becomes stranded at sea with a lower-class servant, is comically mannered to a fault and only dramatically passable - a stunt that not for a minute led me to believe I was doing anything but watching Madonna play acting. Some of this may be her fault - she almost always displays a frightening lack of understanding when it comes to getting inside a character. But we can share the blame as well, much as we are unable or just unwilling to see Elvis as anything other than himself in any of his film blunders of years past.

After much negative initial hype and loads of unflattering speculation about Madonna's aging visage, husband Guy Ritchie's remake of Lina Wertmuller's sparkling 1974 satire, Swept Away, arrives as a mixed bag. Neither good nor awful, it comes off as a watered down, cheaply made, occasionally fun and altogether uneven time-waster that qualifies as a guilty pleasure if you're in the mood for some second-rate movie goods.

When rich, snobbish socialite Amber takes a cruise in the Mediterranean with her elite wealthy circle of friends, her vocal disdain for the lower class and hyper-demanding attitude soon arouse the frustrations of an Italian servant named Guiseppe (Adriano Giannini, following in his father's role-originating footsteps). She focuses her considerable energy on mercilessly ordering him around, insulting and publicly humiliating him at each opportunity. Later, when Amber and Guiseppe find themselves lost at sea and washed up on a tropical island, the liberated Guiseppe turns the elitist tables on Amber, enslaving her and ultimately winning her heart.

You're going to hear all kinds of press about how bad this film really is, but truth be told, it falls somewhere in the middle. Certain elements of it are flat and uninspired, to be sure; chief among them the shaky set-up, loaded down with Madonna's uncomfortable comic lumbering. Rush editing suggests Ritchie's apparent desire to cut to the chase, which in this case means getting to the island as soon as possible. But in its own way, this film provides a spirit of silly fun that almost browbeats you into going along for the ride with two great looking stars, an avalanche of jokes (some intentional and some otherwise) and not much more.

I'm going to refrain from the obvious derogatory comparison's to Wertmuller's infinitely superior film, which today is still funny, knowing, politically incorrect and very well performed. This version of the story is a pretty standard dumbing down of the material, and bears only a passing resemblance to the original film in any way other than general story outline.

In this version, the politics have been simplified and the film's real agenda is a showcase for Madonna and a foolish, contrived tug of war between two beautiful bodies on a gorgeous tropical island. Gone are the politics, for the most part, and the charm. Instead, Swept Away is filled with low comedy, stale jokes (two about Imelda Marcos!), half-baked ideas about sexism and elitism, two dance scenes for Madonna and a love story that never takes off. A word about the love story - there's no build-up, development, conversation or believability. One minute they hate each other, the very next scene has Amber tearfully confessing her love for Guiseppe, followed by a few lovemaking montages set to pop music that, try as they might, fail to capture the romance of say, The Blue Lagoon. Then it all ends on a wildly wrong note; highly contrived and based on a missed communication.

I'd be remiss not to mention two scenes that had the audience in unintentional stitches - a muscular Amber riding an exercise bike furiously on the yacht's deck, going on about the rules of capitalism, is a hoot. It almost seems as if Madonna is incapable of riding the bike and enunciating the dialogue at the same time. And another vulnerable campfire confession has Amber worried about "not being able to compete with eighteen-year-olds," something Madonna has been doing her entire life and quite well, to boot.

Madonna herself, looking every day of her 44 years, and in peak physical condition, is game for comedy and drama, and succeeds only marginally at both, faring a bit better in her dramatic confrontations than in her over-articulated comic timing. I can sense her sometimes giving in to real feelings, then pulling back, guarded. If only she'd just go a little farther we might get somewhere substantial. Her triumph in Swept Away is more of a physical one, I suppose, and for her that's a high compliment. Her incredibly toned, lean and muscular physique is the finest we've seen in the movies since Angela Bassett's turn as a body-built Tina Turner in What's Love Got to do With It?

Giannini is undeniably attractive and charming as Guiseppe, the put upon servant who turns the tables in a politically incorrect but completely satisfying show of brute force and he-man machismo. But in an appropriately startling late scene, he professes his love to Amber with genuine feeling - the kind normally reserved for more authentic cinematic outings.

The supporting cast is completely wasted. Two very good actors, Bruce Greenwood and Jeanne Tripplehorn, cast as Amber's husband and best friend, both memorable in better material, essentially stand aside and let Madonna strut her stuff. Soon enough they're off the screen and most likely laughing at this mess all the way to the bank.

Swept Away may have been a labor of love from Ritchie to Madonna. But Ritchie, ill-suited to this material, ends up as stranded as his two unlikely lovers, going down with the ship like everyone else.