"No dream is ever just a dream. " - Dr. Bill Hartford

Rating: 5/10 (6 July 2005)

Let's start this review off on a positive note. Stanley Kubrick was the most talented film director to ever walk the face of the earth. It's an extremely bold statement, but I'll stand by it proudly. You see, I've never encountered a filmmaker with such a meticulous and keen vision as Mr. Kubrick's. He truly was a genius and every film he made was a shining example of his wondrous talent. Well, 'Eyes Wide Shut' is his very worst film in my opinion, not to mention his most pretentious. It's a very muddled, confusing, peculiar and most of all boring film, but it presents itself as if it's a masterpiece. Critics raved about it, but the Academy shunned it (a move of the wise in my opinion). Kubrick fans seemed to have split on it, and I'm here to say it's a damn shame this was this brilliant man's last film. 'Eyes Wide Shut' tries to awaken curiosity, be provocative and cause us to think long and hard, but it just ends up being an absolute train wreck. It isn't a bad film, but it is just so upsetting and disappointing since it came from Stanley Kubrick.
The warped story follows a rich married couple living it up in a nice apartment in Manhattan. Bill Hartford (Tom Cruise) is a wealthy, young and handsome M.D. married to a slightly crazy nagging woman, Alice Hartford (Nicole Kidman). They seem to be such a perfect couple and have a smart seven-year-old daughter, but they have extreme jealousy issues when it comes to their relationship. Alice is jealous of Bill being with other women, and so is Bill to a certain extent. Just before Christmas, the two get invited to a Christmas party held by Bill's boss, Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack). At the party both Bill and Alice find other people they may be attracted to and fight and argue about it later that night. At the party, Bill runs into an old friend of his who dropped out of medical school, Nick Nightingale (Todd Field), who is the piano player/band leader at Ziegler's party. After the party, Bill and Alice have a huge marital fight while smoking marijuana, and in the middle Bill gets a call from the daughter of a patient who passed away. Bill makes a house call to see Marion (Marie Richardson), whose father has passed. After visiting her, he decides to not cut the night short and go out to see Nick Nightingale play at a local bar. The two meet up, and Bill becomes aware of a secret organization which Nick plays piano at, and wants to check it out. Nick lets the password slip and tells Bill the address. Bill checks it out, and it ends up being a secret ceremony people wear costumes and masks too, then have wild sex orgies with various hookers. Bill get's spotted by the leader of the organization and then is threatened not to tell anybody. The film takes a bizarre and hard-to-follow turn after that point, and frankly it looses my interest.
'Eyes Wide Shut' isn't a success not due to Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick provides astounding direction as always. His vision is vibrant with color and beauty, and that alone kept me going throughout the film's two hour and forty-minute runtime. The acting from the two leads isn't that great. Tom Cruise is absolutely dreadful in his role, and is anything but believable as a doctor. Nicole Kidman is nothing better then average, but her screen time is way more limited then you probably would anticipate. The supporting cast is good though, with strong performances from Sydney Pollack, Todd Field, Vinessa Shaw (as a beautiful prostitute Bill takes a liking to), Rade Serbedzija (as a costume shop owner), Leelee Sobieski (as the costume shop owner's daughter) and Broadway actor Alan Cumming as an eccentric and entertaining to watch hotel desk clerk. The writing in 'Eyes Wide Shut' drags repeatedly, and it's of a quality so low I'm absolutely shocked Stanley Kubrick wrote it! Although the film's cinematography as music score are incredible, it can't really make up for a drawn-out and tiring storyline. Supposedly it took Stanley Kubrick a long time to make this, and that definitely shows because of how jumbled and hard to follow the film is.
In conclusion, 'Eyes Wide Shut' is a film for Kubrick fans only. Others will roll their eyes and sigh through the drawn-out pretentious movie 'Eyes Wide Shut' is. Even though there is a lot of intriguing scenes buried within 'Eyes Wide Shut' they never really seem to redeem the constant dragging of the film. It seems as though there is two or three movies going on at one time in 'Eyes Wide Shut' because the film never really blends into together well. I'm going to cut 'Eyes Wide Shut' more credit then it could possibly deserve because it has the great Stanley Kubrick's name on it. Kubrick really does a fine job with the directing aspect of 'Eyes Wide Shut', but the film lacks almost everything else. 'Eyes Wide Shut' ended up being a disappointment of colossal proportions, and that's an absolute shame seeing as though it was our world's finest film director's last motion picture. Grade: C+