Interesting premise... weak execution

Rating: 5/10 (14 January 2002)

This film is at its heart a thriller. The question that nags at you from halfway through the movie is, "What the heck is going on here?" No, I didn't see the ending coming, so on that level it worked for me as a puzzlebox of a movie.
Nonetheless, in my books a thriller has to have four things going for it before it rates:
1. You can't see what's coming from a mile away. In this sense, Vanilla Sky was fine. I see that one or two people here had the ending pegged, but I sure didn't.
2. Once you know how things end up, you should be kicking yourself because you "should have figured it out." Again, Vanilla Sky delivers: there are enough clues throughout the film (over and over and over) that I should have clued in. However, the clues seem unconnected to the story, so I took the bait didn't make the connection. Two good marks for Vanilla Sky.
3. There should be a credible, interesting alternative explanation. Here I found the film a letdown. What's the alternative explanation? That he's going crackers? This didn't hold my interest long. As such, I found the film turned into a long series of weird events that I couldn't make sense of... until the end. Fun thrillers are fun when you think you have it figured out except for one or two nagging inconsistencies... and then you find out you've been led down the garden path. I spent a third of Vanilla Sky either not knowing what was going on or not caring, until I finally found out in the last ten minutes. Not very satisfying.
4. You have to care about what happens to the characters. I think that this is Vanilla Sky's biggest failing. I must say up front that I've never seen a Tom Cruise movie before. I know: hard to believe; where have I been? Regardless, I found it hard to get interested in his character, because I couldn't figure out what he was feeling throughout the beginning of the film. I took away the impression that he has only five facial expressions: toothy smile, pouty look, angry frown (pouty look without lip extended), "that look" he gives the women that makes them swoon, and quizzical frown. This last one appears much of the time throughout Vanilla Sky, and it simply wasn't enough for me to connect to the character. As such, I had trouble caring about what was happening to him near the end. Tom Cruise spends part of this movie wearing a mask, and oddly enough I found him a better actor with it on: he displays more emotion with his voice and his body movements than with his face.
Overall rating: Rent this one. There is nothing in it that requires the big screen and it isn't worth the big ticket entry price, unless you love Tom Cruise or, like my wife, you have vertigo and want to sit in the front row and have your stomach do flips during the New York flyover scenes.