Paradise

Paradise is a 1982 English language Canadian-produced romance and adventure film starring Phoebe Cates and Willie Aames, written and directed by Stuart Gillard. The original music score was composed by Paul Hoffert with the theme song written and produced by Joel Diamond and L. Russell Brown and sung by Phoebe Cates. It was critiqued at the time as a "knockoff" of the more-famous The Blue Lagoon (1980). The film was marketed with "If Only It Could Have Been Forever... Paradise... No Two People Have Ever Come So Close." The films' themes were similar: Two young people find themselves abandoned in a world with no adult supervision, in fact no other people anywhere. Thus they have total freedom, inevitably learning all about love and sex, as well as basic survival techniques. Leonard Maltin's annual Movie Guide book describes it this way: "Rating: star and a half. Silly Blue Lagoon ripoff, with Aames and Cates discovering sex while stranded in the desert. Both, however, do look good sans clothes." Upon its release, when reviewed on the show Sneak Previews, Roger Ebert selected it as his "Dog of the Week", the worst film he saw that week and heavily berated it. The film was rated "R" for nudity and sexuality. The film genre was described as exotic teen (a teen film set in exotic locations) which began with The Blue Lagoon in 1980. The song "Paradise" was one of the leaders of the pop music hit parade around the world for a long time, becoming one of the biggest hits of the 1980s and giving resultant fame to the film, more so than the reverse.