Not quite compelling, but some interesting interpretations of a superior work

Rating: 5/10 (14 March 2008)

This remake of Open Your Eyes is mostly a point-by-point remake of the original film, but a number of changes in characterization and story drive the film to ultimately have a different (and rather confused) message and consequently, not as potent a work in terms of overall storytelling as its Spanish predecessor. It still has some merit in being a little bit of a mind-trip and slight meditations on the variety of themes that it chooses to embrace.
The story is again about a handsome young man that has it all. However, it comes crashing down on him when he makes a costly decision and then things start getting weird. Part of the issue that I have with this film is that it really fails to strongly set up (and maintain) a motivation for the protagonist to make the later decisions that he does. While it does have a really good (and different) set-up with the protagonist and his relationship to his successful late father, this gets lost as the film progresses and somewhere in the middle of the film, the protagonist suddenly picks up a rather difficult to believe motivation in "love", which is difficult to believe because elements of his original motivation still drive a lot of his decision-making.
In the end, this lack of focus on a central theme (or premise) for the film causes it to lose overall thematic coherence, lessening its impact. Director Cameron Crowe does manage to create his own unique take on the look of the film and at times it's quite impressive and unique to his own style. Another thing to note about the film is that it has a wonderful soundtrack. The film is full of great pop-rock-alt music. Unfortunately, the music hardly lets up for very long and gives the drama little room to breath. Furthermore, the mix throws the music up too much in the front and sometimes makes it hard to focus on the film. Never have I so hated the fact that such a great soundtrack was present in the film.
On the positive side, the players all inject their characters with interesting performances that differ from the original's characters. The work overall isn't that convincing, especially in creating a dreamlike mood for the various dreams, but that might also be my personal taste for subtlety combined with my general foreknowledge of how the plot's going to play out affecting my perception.
In the end, Vanilla Sky does manage to conjure up some interesting images and meditations, but falls short of being compelling. It's biggest weakness is the lack of believable character motivations and a coherent theme and premise to the story. That and the overdone soundtrack. I found Vanilla Sky to be just short of a passable watch in the end and while it might be a decent mind-trip of a film, if you want to choose between this one and the Spanish original, I highly suggest the original, a far more compelling, even if problematic, work. 5/10.