A very dull movie...

Rating: 3/10 (25 January 2002)

I thought this was a terrible movie. Clunky script, actors bouncing performances off of each other, sloooow pacing and the obligatory `twist' at the end (for those that last that long). By the time the `explanation' came around I'd long since given up caring about ANY of the characters and whether they were real, unreal, alive, dead, dreaming, conscious or unconscious.
Crowe's too workmanlike a director to be able to invest the movie with any sense of the strange or the surreal. The characters exist in separate vacuums, talking TO each other but failing to connect. Penelope Cruz's performance is a big disappointment. In exactly the same way that Renee Zellweger's `cute' mannerisms eventually grate in `Jerry Maguire', so too do Cruz's `winsome' tics grate here.
Crowe also indulges himself again regarding pop songs on the soundtrack. He's starting to use them to do the work that the script, camera and actors should. The scene with "Good Vibrations" is a case in point, the song completely undercuts what is happening up there on the screen.

If you looking for a movie that REALLY provokes, that truly deals with the nature of whether what you're seeing is real or not, then go see "Memento" and/or "Mulholland Drive".