A yawner

Rating: 6/10 (20 October 2000)

There's nothing terribly objectionable about EWS, except that it takes almost three hours out of your life and returns nothing. Two words come to mind after two viewings: pointless and boring.
Tom Cruise was pretty good in this role, but it didn't seem like much of a stretch for him. He's playing an Everyman type. Nicole Kidman, though, was terrible, and I'm beginning to doubt if she has any talent at all. The overly long dancing scene featured her wildly overacting in Drunk Mode. (The actor she was paired up with was no great shakes either; talk about a lack of chemistry.) The toke-up scene a few minutes later was even worse. Did Kubrick *require* actors to talk veeeerrrryyy ssslllooowwwlllyyy in a monotone when delivering lines? The "You men have no idea" line took about thirty seconds of screen time, and reminded me of the "I AM in a world of s**t" line from Full Metal Jacket. Kidman wasn't the only one saddled with this direction, which made the movie seem even more ponderous and self-important.
**Some SPOILERS**
The story line was unimpressive at best, and seemed stolen from the plots of a hundred soft-core semi-porn films. Everything in it was a cheat. Talk about a lack of commitment; no one ever follows through on anything. Cruise picks up a hooker and doesn't do anything with her. He goes to a sex party and avoids having sex, but he thinks about it a lot. Even the crucial motivating factor for Cruise's character is nothing -- his wife was attracted to another man the previous year. Nothing ever happened between the two of them, but supposedly it rocks Cruise's world.

Two scenes at the end really spell it out better than anything else. While you're led to believe that there's a vast conspiracy, Sidney Pollack tells Cruise it was all just a fantasy. The key visual clue which tells you it may not be is immediately revealed, eliminating all suspense in the final climactic return home for Cruise. You see the clue, completely aware of what it means, then have to sit through two or three minutes of Cruise walking through the house before he sees it himself.
Let's not forget the extremely annoying toy-piano score. It consists of someone using a single finger to hit the same seven-note run, over and over again throughout the movie. Ugh. It's supposed to indicate suspense, but all it does is set your teeth on edge.
I know Kubrick is a god to some people, but this movie is NOTHING like 2001 or A Clockwork Orange, or even the first half of Full Metal Jacket. It's a waste of money, time, and talent. If it looks appealing to you, I'd suggest waiting until it's on the movie channels. Don't waste any more money on it.