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"Vanilla Sky"
(Reviewed November 29, 2001)
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Incredibly inferior remake of the 1997 Spanish film "Open Your Eyes"--which was no cinema classic itself, but which was immeasurably better than this junked-up, high-gloss, completely offputting Hollywood version.
The amazing thing about this shoddy retread is that virtually everything director Cameron Crowe added to the original is clumsy, forced and wrongheaded. (The only exception is a truly astounding shot of a deserted Times Square at the beginning of the film, which is so impressive that everyone seeing it will wonder the same thing: "DAMN! How much did it cost to get those streets shut down long enough to get THAT shot?")
Chief among the misbegotten changes was Crowe's decision to rummage through his record collection and jukebox the film with song after song after song under nearly every scene, performed by wildly disparate artists ranging from Peter Gabriel to REM to U2 to Freur (anybody else remember "Doot Doot?"). As dull as Crowe's movie is, it would be inconceivably worse without this near constant steroid-like juicing by out-of-context hit singles. (Try this experiment: As soon as a song you recognize begins playing during the movie, tune it out and merely watch what is happening onscreen. Voila, you now know the secret ingredient for making even the most amateurish home movies memorable!)
More complaints: Penelope Cruz played the role of Sofia in Spanish in the original and now in English here. Not being bilingual, I have no idea how convincing her line-readings were in her native tongue, but she certainly seemed more naturalistic in "Open Your Eyes." In "Vanilla Sky," her heavily accented English and awkward delivery add up to Damn Bad Acting.
Tom Cruise, playing a spoiled rich kid (kid???) who may or may not have committed a murder and who is losing his hold on reality, meanders through the movie in two modes: Way Too Intense and Way Too Laid Back. A couple of things that were added to the script (not in the original, in other words) reflect what could be the zillion-dollar hand of an ego-driven superstar/producer at work: Cruise's character's mistress refers to him having sex with her four times in one night (wow, what a stud!). And Cruise's character at one point feels the need to tell another man, "I'm straight" (wow, what a heterosexual stud!).
Worst of all, this movie's supporting cast includes my personal choice for Actor I Most Would Enjoy Never, Ever Seeing Again: Jason Lee. As Cruise's best friend, Lee is so teeth-gratingly, skin-crawlingly annoying that I could not imagine any human being willingly remaining in his company for more than two seconds. Oofah!
The strangest thing about the movie is that it manages to sink under the weight of Crowe's tinkerings and obtrusive little record-maven obsessions (a Dylan album-cover reference is just too sickeningly precious to be believed) even though most of the film is virtually a line-for-line translation of the Spanish original. Crowe's billing as "writer/producer" is a real howl; I think the translator who did the subtitles on the VHS copy of "Open Your Eyes" should challenge that credit with the Writers Guild. The only substantial original writing Crowe did involved completely messing up the movie's ending, rendering it nearly incomprehensible.
Lord only knows how the Great Unwashed will respond to this crazy Cuisinart concoction of "A.I.," "The Family Man," "The Matrix" and "Vertigo." The movie's ad campaign implies that it is a romantic thriller, making no mention of the fact that it has a huge, head-scratching dollop of fourth-rate Philip K. Dick science fiction thrown in.
My prediction: Everyone who sees "Vanilla Sky" on opening weekend will kill this movie dead with bad word-of-mouth by the following Friday, consigning it to the same ashheap as Cruise's similarly pointless and pompous "Eyes Wide Shut."
Back Row Grade: F
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