High ambitions, poor execution

Rating: 2/10 (15 August 1999)

Have all the critics shut their eyes? Sure, Kubrick had high ambitions for Eyes Wide Shut, and he certainly raised some interesting questions about relationships and secret thoughts and fantasies.
But please. Eyes Wide Shut is horribly miscast. Tom Cruise might be able to play a doctor in M*A*S*H, but he comes across with no credibility in this movie. His acting is shallow, his believability nil.
Sydney Pollack, as the mysterious, wealthy Ziegler, in the end, fuels paranoia about the great Zionist conspiracy (rich, powerful people who shall remain nameless, indeed). He may be credible as a businessman, but not as a member of the power elite; he looks and acts too much like one's Uncle Saul. Kubrick originally intended to cast Harvey Keitel, and it's a shame that Keitel didn't make it. Keitel would have had brought the ominous underlying tension needed for the role.
Then there's the sexism. Now, I enjoyed Nicole Kidman immensely. I'd like to take her home with me, and she actually was one of the better actors. But how Kubrick could film a movie rife with female frontal nudity and not show even one little johnson is inexcusable in this day and age. We don't even get to see where the sun doesn't shine on Tom Cruise. This inequity merely contributes to the movie's out-of-whackness.
I could go one about the contrived situations and the ham-fisted acting.
If you really want to see a movie that raises many of the same questions, head over to the video store for Apocolypse Now, which chronicles a similar kind of personal voyage, with better acting, less obvious atmosphere, and a Marlon Brando who, although also miscast, is somehow less irritating.