They Made a Bad, Bad Film...

Rating: 3/10 (13 July 2001)

Eyes Wide Shut is the perfect title. Think about it, eyes that are wide open, but unable to see. You know, like a corpse...
Despite all the pre-release hype about the cutting edge sex supposedly being ingrained in this film, the end product is a film about NOT having sex. It is about a guy going out to have a quickie affair and despite getting propositioned by women, a teenage girl, a gay man and two prostitutes, not to mention attending an orgy, the guy never even gets his pants unzipped. It is like Blake Edwards' "10" without the laughs. Worse its soft core porn with no sex, a thriller with no suspense, and a drama with no depth or insight. It is a shaggy dog story, all build up with no pay off. It's like the orgy scene that is the film's center piece; everyone prances around in costumes and masks and never get around to doing anything, sexual or otherwise. (Was Kubrick so isolated from years of being locked away plotting movie scripts that he was totally out of touch with the real world and the sexual revolution? His prissy view of sexuality is like something that might have been shocking in the early sixties, but now seems embarrassingly infantile.)
I will confess that I am not a great fan of Kubrick. True, as a visual stylist, he is quite accomplished, but it takes more than pretty pictures to make a great film. A heart and soul or at least a hint of passion are needed. I write this after having seen A.I., a truly great film. It has Kubrick's striking visual sense, but Spielberg gave it what has been missing from Kubrick's work since before 2001, and that is humanity.