ill-conceived, pretentious, and Tom Cruise is miscast

Rating: 2/10 (2 July 2002)

Kubrick grew up in the Bronx, NY. It is possible that in junior high school some other boy told Stanley a fantasy about orgies on Long Island, NY (where richer people lived). Perhaps as an older man - after a liftime in England - Kubrick retained such a memory, and glued onto it another idea he had - to cast a real-life couple as a couple in a movie.
There is hardly another explanation how such a great film-maker could make such a piece of incoherent nonsense. While Tom Cruise is an under-rated performer, his specialty is aggressive, high-energy, and relaxed characters. To cast Cruise as a repressed older NY physician lacking in imagination was colossally wrong. In 30 seconds anyone can think of a better choice (John Heard, or Jeff Goldblum spring to mind).
Kubrick's earlier movies were marked by the realistic and detailed depictions of technology and professions. Compare this movie, which completely fails to depict what is like to be a doctor.
Of course, if Kubrick had wanted to make a real movie, in order to introduce conflict he would have had his doctor discover the practice of sleeping around with female nurses, or something. But no, it had to be a secret society of orgiers! Given the name of the movie, is this society supposed to have opened this doctor's eyes? That's so absurd an idea as to be almost laughable.
I am no prude, I like looking at women as much as the next guy, but here some strange almost-lechery seemed to have compelled Kubrick to put sequence after sequence of female half-nudity, all of it gratuitous and dull. Maybe it was Kubrick's film-maker instincts, maybe he knew that showing so much flesh would con all the young fools into thinking this was a good movie.