Absolutely TERRIBLE in every way.

Rating: Null/10 (24 December 2001)

CONTAINS SPOILERS This film is beyond description. Not because it's "intellectually stimulating" or "difficult to understand" but because it is so utterly horrible that there does not exist a word in the English language that could accurately describe its level of failure. The characters are hollow, the acting is stale, and the pacing is nauseating. The directing and editing are cliched and the soundtrack fits the film like spandex pants fit a sumo wrestler. The film's dialog is laughable at best and the plot twists and turns in ways that just don't matter ::ENDING REVEALED AHEAD::
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But after enduring two hours of insanely pompous "jibberjabber", we finally learn what the film had been vaguely alluding to the whole time: That the events of the film were not real, but in fact dreams that Cruise's character experiences after he (I'm not kidding) hires a cryogenics company to freeze his body allowing him to live forever in the magic dream of his subconscious. This "Who Shot J.R.?" ending is supposed to make you contemplate the barriers between the real world and our dreams, but it left me thinking about how anyone in their right mind could buy in to this movie.

Cruise's random yells and smiles are eerily similar to those he displayed in "Jerry McGuire", while Crowe seems stuck on his 'Almost Famous' rock music trip, as 'Vanilla Sky's name-stuffed soundtrack adds nothing to the film (other than marketing value of course). Bob Dylan, Jeff Buckley, R.E.M., Radiohead, and Sigur Ros all make appearances in awkward places. Especially ironic is Radiohead's "Everything In Its Right Place", the opening number to a film where nothing is anywhere near where it's supposed to be.

0.5 out of 10