An overzealous attempt at an intellectually stimulating movie!

Rating: 6/10 (26 July 1999)

For the first time in a long time I was actually excited to see a movie. The hype surrounding EYES WIDE SHUT and the irony of Kubrick's death before the movie even came close to opening brought out the butterflies in my stomach as I walked to the box office and purchased my ticket. I even had to wait a week after it came out to go so that I could see it with my girlfriend who couldn't go see it with me the week before. We wanted to tickle our imaginations by seeing Kubrick's "final masterpiece". I walked out of the theater utterly disappointed. I like movies with intellectual stimulation. Movies that don't impress the viewer with computerized special effects (the Mummy) or gross-out comedy (There's something about mary) though those movies can be really great to see once...I like movies that become better and better every time you see them and leave you walking out of the theater thinking about the story.
EYES WIDE SHUT left me walking out of the theater saying...what just happened. I've concluded...nothing. Nothing happened. This movie tried to create a complex web of internal angst but it was only confusion. Tom Cruise gets mad at his wife for having fantasies so he walks the streets for 2 days, shell out about $1000 loosely, doesn't take advantage of the two opportunities to get back at his wife which is his mission in the first place. He stumbles across a nightmarish orgy which is totally unrealistic and a complete a completely opposite turn from the way this movie was going. The orgy seemed to pose a threat to him and his family but near the end we find out that it was only to scare him into staying quiet.
When all is said in done, nothing had happened. This movie fired blanks! I waited the entire movie for a plot and it just wasn't there. The sexual content of this movie was used in excess. Sex was everywhere and in such unusual and degrading forms that it made 'making love' look like a thing of the past. The closing line by nicole kidman "we have to do something we haven't done in a while...f**k" left me totally hating this movie. Even sex with his own wife is considered animalistic and degrading.
EYES WIDE SHUT did not deliver at all. In the end, everything was the same as it was at the beginning except that tom and nicole (bill and alice) had a marriage that was even rockier than in the beginning. This movie had a chance to be great but failed dismally...a little bit of it was enjoyable but for the most part, if I wanted to spend 2 1/2 hours watching nothing happen, I'd watch paint dry!