Weak Twilight Zone episode spread over 2 hours

Rating: 3/10 (17 September 2002)

I'd heard mainly negative criticism about this film and my expectations were low, so perhaps I could be pleasantly surprised, unfortunately not.
First of all, the story is very weak. I generally like these type of films, `Welcome to Blood City', being a great example. Question who we are, our place in the universe and our perceptions of the world are all interesting themes. The problem is the story is quite simplistic and is presented in an annoying disjointed manner. I know this was done deliberately, but spread over 2 hour +, this can get very annoying. The filmmakers really needed to make the collapse of the VR much more gradual and subtle leading up to a crescendo, but atlas it was a mixed mess.
On story and presentation, maybe the film would have got a 5 or 6/10 from me. After watching probably one of the worst actors in Hollywood (Mr Cruise, in case I needed to clarify) present one of the most obnoxious uninteresting characters I have ever seen, what's with this stupid boyish grin the whole time. Add Penelope Cruz, who was almost as bad, then you have no believability and no chemistry whatsoever. Jason Lee, was also very unconvincing as 'the friend' which Cruise treated like crap. Actually Jason Lee repeated his performance in `Almost Famous', yet another poor effort from Mr Crowe.
Thirdly the length of the film, shorten it for God's sake, a plot this weak, doesn't need 2+ hours to send people to sleep, it could do it in 80 minutes.
It's a shame about Mr Crowe, Jerry Maguire was excellent, IMO, but I recently saw Almost Famous and Singles, both were very poor, the only redeeming feature was that Singles had the best band in the world playing on the soundtrack (Pearl Jam, which I'm sure you already knew).
3/10.