Totally "sex-phobic" film - and a trainwreck to boot

Rating: Null/10 (31 March 2008)

I watched this twice - thinking that perhaps I had missed something.
But, unlike "2001", I came up short. I thought this film was completely overproduced and Tom Cruise miscast.
The continuously-emphasized sexual tension is not merited by the facts of the film. What is this sex club that requires such surreptitiousness? Nothing out of the ordinary - nothing like the infamous Plato's Retreat of the 1970s. Sex in the club seems terribly "ordinary" (no dark realizations of taboo practices).
And one has only to utter a password to gain entry? Aw come-on - if the members are THAT exclusive, they surely would have more secure procedures to ensure restricted admission.
More to the point: every time something sexual is about to happen in the movie, it takes on a negative aspect (a sexual encounter turns out to include an underage girl, another possible sex partner is revealed to have HIV, etc).
And then there's Tom Cruise, who, by his own admission, had trouble with the part. Small wonder: he doesn't have the suave intellectual character needed for the part. He's used to playing highly physically-expressed heroes - not troubled degreed professionals. (He's also never looked more ridiculous standing next to his former wife Nicole - who towers over him despite the fact she must have been sporting flats.)
The movie is beautifully photographed, however, and lit to the hilt: golds, blues and reds all sensuously rendered in soft focus. But it all seems so unnecessary - even distracting - considering how un-sensational the storyline becomes.
Poor Stanley Kubrick - I'm sure he tried very hard to forge a mystery filled with sexual innuendo and ambiguity, but I think, in the end, he simply realized it was a lost cause. He signed off on it - then signed off on Life - leaving Tom and Nicole feeling/looking guilty for pushing him over the edge due to their inability to connect with the subject matter, And they got divorced! (I could swear their "love scenes" were totally devoid of any chemistry).