1 1/2 stars

Rating: 2/10 (1 May 2004)

On the bright side, Cameron Crowe can take solace in the fact that thanks to Rush Hour 2, Tomb Raider, and Swordfish, Vanilla Sky is safe from being the worst film of its year. I am a big fan of Cameron Crowe and intrigued by Paul McCartney's title song, I thought this could be good but I was let down. The film stars Tom Cruise as...um, I don't remember the guy's name but it's really not important, Tom Cruise basically plays the same guy he always plays. The chief characteristics of the basic Tom Cruise character is he's 1) God's gift to women 2) Bold and very confident and 3) Has a chip on his shoulder, often something to do with a deceased father figure. Given the right plot, Tom Cruise can usually work well because the character progresses and usually brings the cockiness down to Earth while overcoming that chip on his shoulder, and we often root for him through the whole process because of attribute #1, woman find him good-looking and guys generally think he's pretty cool.
The problem is that there really isn't much of a plot here, so the movie is just on pretty faulty ground with Cruise as the protagonist, and the film eventually falls flat. The movie starts out pretty normal, Cruise wakes up next to Cameron Diaz, a friend who sleeps with him, and goes to work as a business executive, where has to deal with the board that co-owns the company and don't think that Cruise is as qualified as the company's former owner, his father (that's attribute #3). Cruise than goes to a party and falls in love with Penelope Cruz, who's not as easy to get into bed as Cameron Diaz. Yes, Cruise forms a solid friendship with her and is enthusiastic about meeting her cause, as I said he's in love. Then, Cruise is driving around with Cameron Diaz and she bursts with rage over being used by him, and she drives the car over a bridge. Yep, that kind of threw you for a loop, if you were hearing about the storyline for the first time, didn't it?
The real plot kind of gets underway here, but as I said, it's not much of a plot, at least in my opinion. Tom Cruise survives the crash but he's pretty badly injured, that's about the basics. Past that, things are going on in the storyline but not in any real discernable order, and reality just kind of becomes blurred. I won't give away too much, but if you stick with the movie, towards the end, things got a little easier to figure out. However, there's a lot of screentime here, where nothing's really even that easy to understand or that watchable. Also, the film has a sort of dark and depressing tone, and since the darkness didn't really serve any function, i thought that brought down the movie.
One of the bright spots of the movie, however, was Penelope Cruz. She really lit up the screen and it was easy to see why Tom Cruise was falling in love with her.
Past that, the other characters serve little purpose. Cameron Diaz is basically there to hammer in attribute #1 of Cruise's character, because she's very hot herself and her willingness to have sex with him without strings just so she can get closer to him. It makes her a really degrading person, but it makes it easier for Cruise to convince us that his character in this movie is God's gift to women. Jason Lee plays Cruise's best friend and helps develop attribute #2, Cruise's confidence. Because Lee's a complete pushover and clearly is the more subservient one in their friendship, considering how he give up Penelope Cruise for her, how could Cruise not be confident? In short, this was an admirable experiment for Cameron Crowe, I still like his stuff, I even liked some of his small touches, but a lot of the things in the movie just didn't work at all for me.