sexual activities. Roger Ebert gave the film 1½ stars out of 4, claiming that it "could conceivably have been made interesting, if any serious attempt had been made to explore what might really happen if two 7-year-old kids were shipwrecked on an island. But this isn't a realistic movie. It's a wildly idealized romance, in which the kids live in a hut that looks like a Club Med honeymoon cottage, while restless natives commit human sacrifice on the other side of the island". He also deemed the ending a blatant cop-out. He and Gene Siskel selected the film as one of their "dogs of the year" in a 1980 episode of Sneak Previews. Time Out commented that the film "was hyped as being about 'natural love'; but apart from 'doing it in the open air', there is nothing natural about two kids (unfettered by the bonds of society from their early years) subscribing to marriage and traditional role-playing". Gary Arnold of The Washington Post similarly called the film "a picturesque rhapsody to Learning Skills, Playing House, Going Swimming, Enjoying the Scenery and Starting to Feel Sexy in tropical seclusion". He particularly ridiculed the lead characters' persistent inability to make obvious inferences. One of the few positive reviews came from Variety which claimed it "a beautifully mounted production". In a retrospective review for RogerEbert.com, critic Abbey Bender wrote: "When it comes to the depiction of burgeoning sexuality, The Blue Lagoon wants to have it both ways ... with puberty making itself known through rather obvious dialogue. Sexual discovery is here the natural outcome of the storybook situation. So yes, the soft-focus montages of teen flesh are gratuitous but the film presents it all as innocent—these kids don't even know what sex is! They don't even know how a baby is made! They learn it the hard way, obviously. By couching sexuality in primitive purity, The Blue Lagoon gets away with perversion that would likely be even more controversial today". Box office The film was the twelfth-biggest box office hit of 1980 in North America according to The Numbers, grossing US$58,853,106 in the United States and Canada on a $4.5 million budget. Accolades The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: 2002: AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – Nominated Versions and adaptations The Blue Lagoon was based on Henry De Vere Stacpoole's novel of the same name, which first appeared