How the Other Half Half-Lives (possible spoilers)

Rating: 6/10 (16 December 2001)

"Vanilla Sky" is Cameron Crowe's remake of "Abre los Ojos", a surrealist Spanish movie, which, like so many surrealist Spanish movies, I didn't see.
The remake takes place in New York, and, as required by federal law, opens with a helicopter shot of Manhattan that passes directly over the buildings until midtown resembles a grid of concrete layer cakes. David Aames (Tom Cruise) is a cocky young magnate who runs a Maxim-oid magazine which he inherited from his father. Surrounding him are Julie (Cameron Diaz), a singer with whom he engages in (for him) recreational sex; Brian (Jason Lee), his cool-geek novelist sidekick; and Sofia (Penelope Cruz), a mysterious ballerina that his buddy brings to a party. Sparks fly between Cruz and Cruise, causing jealousy all around, leading to something I guess you would call a romantic parallellogram, ending in a car wreck that disfigures Cruise's face and cripples his cockiness. He has to rebuild his life, while struggling against "The Board", seven sourpuss executives determined to steal his company.
This is told in flashback: Cruise is in custody for murder, talking absently with a police psychologist (Kurt Russell), monitored by an ill-tempered guard who is itching for an excuse to throttle Cruise silly (maybe he saw "Cocktail"). The story shifts between reality and dreams frequently, which is alarming to Cruise. He doesn't know when he's dreaming or not, what is real, and what happened or what he only thinks happened. One minute he's sharing a cozy moment with Cruz, the next he's with Diaz (one wonders how, exactly, that constitutes a problem). Is he going crazy? Is he dreaming? After a while of this, I was in agreement with the dyspeptic guard: gimme five minutes in a room with the screenwriter and a rubber hose; I'll get this narrative-structure thing straightened out.
We spend too long early on observing Cruise's party lifestyle, watching pretty people flirt blandly with one another. The scenes are shallow, the dialogue cutesy, until the movie threatens to become yet another dull, talky, New York-set relationship comedy (I kept expecting Edward Burns to wander into a shot). By the time it takes a serious turn with Cruise's disfigurement, we have little invested in the characters. Cruise's plight seems less about profound crisis than vanity: his face is messed up, but it's not THAT bad. He's still Tom Cruise, for Pete's sake. He no longer has stunning women throwing themselves at him every three frames or so, but then, some of us have to live with that reality every day.
The acting is effective and involving, if familiar. Cruz played this role in the original; she's on friendly territory. And she's not alone; "Vanilla Sky" sometimes feels like a weekend retreat for characters from other movies: Tom Cruise from "Jerry Maguire" meets Cameron Diaz from "A Life Less Ordinary" meets Jason Lee from "Mallrats" meets Kurt Russell from "Unlawful Entry". While Cruise has played parts like this before, there's a reason: he's good at it. His David, post-wreck, is not always sympathetic or readable (especially while behind a "Halloween"-style therapeutic mask), but he's never uninteresting. What credibility David's problems have stems entirely from Cruise's performance, and it's a lot to shoulder. The characters do develop, it just takes most of them a long time to get around to it.
I should come clean, too, that I am an inveterate Cameron Diaz junkie (proof: I made it through "Keys to Tulsa" AND "Very Bad Things". My AMPAS Medal of Valor is pending.) So I'll skip some hagiography and say she's good in a relatively small role. Her confrontation with Cruise is deranged, disjointed, a little degrading, and heartbreaking. Julie's nuts, but she's also a girl in love, who has been treated rather callously, and we find ourselves wanting to kick Cruise in the head (at least I did; but I get like that). Diaz is also the first to invest her character with any kind of inner life, any signs of something under the surface. Cruise doesn't manage that until the second reel, Cruz even later; Jason Lee never gets far beyond amiable goofiness.
The movie is visually powerful, and that goes a long way. Crowe infuses it with dreamy imagery and well-chosen music that smoothes over some of the clunky, predictable moments in the script. The ending reveals a nifty premise well brought off (though you'll likely see it coming), and the last scenes have a weird Zen beauty to them, though they list a bit under the weight of some New Age silliness. Unfortunately, even though we appreciate the well-crafted conclusion, there's still all the UPN-grade dramaturgy we had to slog through first.
"Vanilla Sky" aims for highbrow surrealism, but the movie it most called to mind was "Total Recall", which explored many of the same themes (granted, with more stuff blowing up). However, its attempt with "The Board" to inject paranoia into the story doesn't take. Good paranoia movies work because they weave a just-plausible layer of conspiracy into real life. Because "Vanilla Sky" is so unreal already, there's not much to be paranoid about. How is "The Board" supposed to dictate the reality in Cruise's head? How is anybody?
I don't exactly counsel against seeing "Vanilla Sky". There is enough talent wrapped up in it to make it slightly more than the sum of its flawed parts. And, hey, anything for Cameron Diaz.