More good than bad

Rating: Null/10 (5 July 2002)

What a mess. Most of the "messy" films you'll see are messy because of editing. This one is messy because the plot is too thick. There are arguably four or five plot points in this film. However, as ugly as it gets sometimes, Vanilla Sky is interesting and somewhat perplexing (in a good way) and I generally liked it for the most part.
Yes, Cameron Crowe is out of his element here. Just like the Coen brothers have no business doing a romantic comedy, Crowe doesn't need to be sticking his head in stories like this. Mainly because his style brings nothing to the table in this kind of film. His trademark character monologues and epiphanies simply convolute the film more than it already is and the "dancing" he does around the central part of the story is alright in simple minded films like Singles and Almost Famous, but we don't need that here.
I think you'd really have to go out of your way to spoil this film, but I'll just stick to the basics anyway. The first half hour or so of the film is bad. The Tom Cruise character is an arrogant prick, as he is in every other one of his films, but he's an unlikeable arrogant prick in this one. And the Cameron Diaz character is equally unlikeable. Someone must have told Penelope Cruz that if she spoke English but didn't lose any of her Spanish accent, she'd sound cute and adorable and everyone would love her. Doesn't work on me. She's just as annoying as Cruise and Diaz.

So what did I like about this film you ask? Basically, when the plot starts to jump around, the film gets interesting. I didn't like all of the plot turns and a couple of them don't make any sense, even after finishing the film, but the premise is fascinating once it gets going. And I did like the way in which the story was presented, in the meeting between Cruise and Kurt Russell. Moderate spoiler ahead...
Some people might not like to constantly be second guessing what they're seeing onscreen, but I generally do. Watching this film, you never know if you're seeing the past, present or future, or if what you're seeing is real or a dream. Or a hallucination.
There's plenty to criticize and plenty to be annoyed with in Vanilla Sky. But the flip side is a little more plentiful, in my opinion. "B-"