What were the critics thinking?

Rating: 3/10 (18 July 1999)

I divide this movie into two parts. Part 1 Nicole Kidman gets naked a lot, and Part 2 Tom Cruise puts in a series of pathetic attempts to cheat on his wife while remaining entirely confused. What most bothered me about this film (aside from it's extreme, boring length and painfully drawn out scenes) was it's treatment of the main characters, specifically Nicole Kidman. The infamous orgy scene is rather dull, and the treatment of women in it is very dehumanizing, but it is supposed to be. The treatment of Kidman's character, however, is very base. (I had no real sympathy for the character. She simpers her way through the party scene at the beginning of the movie in a most irritating fashion.) At first the quirky treatment of the everyday (we see Kidman on the toilette in her beautiful evening dress) is amusing. It is nice to see something real. We've become so accustomed to the fake loud noises of fight scenes and the fact that all phone numbers begin with 555, that it is kind of nice to see a little harmless taboo reality. It becomes irritating, however, when it is only Kidman's character that receives this treatment. We see her later putting on deodorant. In the first half of the film (she disappears for huge portions of the rest of the film) she is treated very differently from the way in which Cruise's character is. The movie begins with her getting naked, and in the scene in which she reveals a past desire to cheat on Cruise we continually get full body shots of Kidman (who is unquestionably gorgeous and worth looking at). Cruise, however, continually gets the "money" shots - head shots. We see him naked only once in the short and poorly edited, "they did a bad, bad thing" shot. Neither of the characters seems to have an understanding of his or her own gender let alone the other's. Kidman's character makes the most naive and silly complaints against Cruise for pointing out the obvious (yes, she is a gorgeous woman and men will want to get her in bed). Cruise's character is equally naive when he asserts that women are only looking for security and commitment, not sex. Moreover, it's just a really bad, boring movie, full of horrible (let me say that again for emphasis - HORRIBLE) dialog and scenes that are unnecessarily drawn out (For those of you who have to see it I example the pool table conversation between Cruise and "Ziggler") Don't let me forget to say that it's predictable. The only thing good I can say about this movie was that it made excellent use of lighting and exploring the possibilities of grainy film.