The emperor has no clothes

Rating: 2/10 (5 April 2009)

Reading other user reviews it would seem that a favourite line is that EWS is supposed 'to make the viewer think'. Let me decode that line for you. It simply means that the movie, especially in terms of character, makes no sense whatsoever, so you are left wondering what in the world these people were doing. So yes. I thought. I thought, 'Wow - this is an incredibly bad film.' Again, reading other reviews, I am confronted with the idea that perhaps Doctor Bill's wanderings through NYC are really just some kind of dream or fantasy sequence. I don't know where this idea came from - perhaps the book itself but I can definitely say that it DOESN'T come from the film. There is nothing to suggest that you are in a dream or fantasy world - it is played straight. And because of this it fails miserably because neither character, but especially Cruise's, acts in a manner that follows normal human behaviour.
SPOILER ALERT Bill states quite clearly in the argument between he and his wife that he is not a jealous person. Nothing is particularly shocking about Alice's admittance that she wanted to have adulterous sex with a Naval officer that would suddenly cause this to change in Bill. And yet suddenly we now see Bill obsessing over the image of his wife engaging in adultery in his mind, and at this point the whole movie loses the plot. We see a grieving daughter that hardly knows him profess her undying love to him. Who knows why. He then decides to visit a prostitute - only to not go through with it when his wife calls, even though there is no indication of the relief of an escaped mistake. Despite this ' I can't cheat on my wife' moment - he then suddenly becomes incredibly curious about his piano friend's secret gig - that he goes to an awful lot of trouble to steal into the event to see for himself. Why? It just wouldn't have happened. Bill's character is not that sexual driven - he not that sexual compelled - hence him not having sex with the prostitute. He wouldn't have gone there. And when he did get there- he certainly would have gone running at the first sign of trouble - i.e., the masked woman telling him to get out of there.
I could go on and on about these strange behavioural choices. And I understand true 'tragedy' where a character is compelled by their character to follow their seeming fate through to a destructive conclusion - but there were no signs of destruction in Cruise's character - nor was there a fatal and destructive end. So it was all pretty pointless. Add to it an incredibly trite ending in a toy store where the moral of the story is 'we need to f**k.' If that sounds bad- let me assure you - it really really is.
In terms of sexual matters - overt and subtle and the machinations of sexual desire - David Lynch captures more truth in a single surreal scene in almost any of his movies than this one does in almost three hours. I don't really think Kubrick and sex go together at all.