If it ain't broke, don't fix it: See the original, skip this

Rating: 1/10 (24 March 2002)

Vanilla Sky was a huge disappointment. Based upon the Spanish film, Open Your Eyes (which was brilliant), Cameron Crowe ruins the movie with hard-pounding music, over-simplification of the plot by taking out any semblance of nuance or thinking on the part of the audience, and idiotic re-writes. I thought Vanilla Sky was panned because the audiences didn't understand its premise. Hardly. Crowe leaves nothing open to interpretation; rather, he spells everything out in black and white and Hollywoodizes the ending. Everything I loved about Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes), Crowe ruined. I believed nothing. Tom Cruise gives one of the worst performances in a decade. Like Cruise's lack of chemistry with Rene Zellwinger in Jerry Maguire, Cruise has no chemistry with Penelope Cruz, who reprises her role from the Spanish original, in expanded and unnecessary fashion. Vanilla Sky is a waste of time and money. I found nothing redeeming about it, other than when it finally ended and the pain of such a bad experience was over.