Don't bother --- you'll just want those two and a half hours back

Rating: Null/10 (2 July 2002)

It's hard to say what this movie is about. One thing it sure isn't about is sex, or rather the erotic aspect of sex. In fact it's rather easy to say what the is movie isn't about: Eroticism, storytelling, competent direction, editing, and certainly not acting. Evidently Kubrick spent a massive amount of time filming and editing the thing, but like some things, the more you pick at it, the worse it gets. Call it perfectionism, call it attention to detail, but also call it not just diminishing return, but out and out regression.
Usually one can say that a movie needed more work, this one needed much, much less. The movie itself is a kind of descent, like so many other works both literary and cinematic. In fact it's sort of a basic plot of many soft and hard core sex movies: Disatisfied middle class husband descends into a strange and erotic world, learns a lesson and returns to his wife a better person (usually releasing her own pent up desires in the process). This is a dark, dark, version of that plot line. And it's hard to see if any lesson is learned by Cruise's character, in fact it's hard to say anything has really changed--the two leads are just as vapid and stupid at the end of the movie as when it began.
For those folks who pretend to get this movie, well, self deception is one thing that does come through in the film -- so live long and prosper in that deception. There's nothing here to get -- save that sex is really complicated and people lie to themselves about it.
One interesting parallel is a soft core sex movie called "Sin In The Suburbs" from the very early sixties that has a similar sex style club involved. It's not a good movie -- but it goes to show this has all been done before, and much, much better.