A brave and noble failure

Rating: 5/10 (13 December 2002)

Here we have a mismatch of director and genre. Cameron Crowe's warm, offbeat, and well-observed comedies put some pretty interesting characters onscreen who ring true in all sorts of little ways that make us love them or at least sympathize with them (if they are supposed to be badguys, but no one is truly bad in a Cameron Crowe movie). He has a gift for capturing the innocence of awkwardness and a keen ear for dialogue. He uses music to rhapsodize his scenes in memorable ways (e.g., "In Your Eyes" from "Say Anything", "Tiny Dancer" from "Almost Famous", that lovely Bruce Springsteen song in "Jerry Maguire", and the entire "Singles" soundtrack).
All that said, watching "Vanilla Sky" is an uncomfortable experience, and in all the wrong ways. Crowe proves clumsy when trying to weave an engaging mystery while doing the things he has always done to make a good movie. It's hard to have the warm fuzzies about characters when they're trapped in a trippy world that's hard to understand. Crowe never seems to get the tone right, although Tom Cruise does all he can to do that tightrope walk between agony and ecstasy and cockiness and vulnerability that he has practically copyrighted. Jason Lee only adds to the movie's awkwardness by stretching far beyond his range (he really needs to stick to comedy--as a dramatic actor he has two modes: wise-cracking acerbic smart ass and yelling acerbic smart ass). Penelope Cruz is just kinda there as the woman Cruise loves, but Cameron Diaz does some fine work in a thankless role of the jilted lover who bobs back and forth between flirtation, sadness, loneliness, desperation, jealousy, and finally rage.
"Vanilla Sky" is the kind of movie that you want to like because of how well it might have worked in different hands (and conversely, for the hands that dared to take it on in a bold step in a new direction career-wise). In the end, though, it just leaves you feeling cold and like you've gotten nowhere.