The Lucid Dream Option

Rating: 6/10 (13 November 2008)

Tom Cruise as David Aames has it all, as we used to say in my neighborhood by the short hairs of the scrotum in a more earthy manner. Unlimited wealth, good looks, what is there in the world to want for. He's got an occasional sex partner in Cameron Diaz, but a chance meeting in a bar with Penelope Cruz, tells him she's the one.
But it's not to be after he gets into an automobile accident and becomes horribly disfigured. We're talking here about a man not used to having too many really bad life curves tossed at him. However with his wealth he can take an option not too many of us have. Cruise gets himself cryogenically frozen with a 150 year expiration date in the hope that science will develop the technology to fix his face. He even gets to dream with implanted images of the good times.
Director Cameron Crowe used some old movie clips for things Cruise identified with in Vanilla Sky. The one that would have explained it all was from Forbidden Planet where Warren Stevens after he takes the Krel brain test, tells Leslie Nielsen that those Krel forgot all about the Id. It's that Id that keeps screwing up Tom's dream, turning it into a big old nightmare.
Vanilla Sky is a good film, could have been a lot better for me if I had some warning of what was going on. The film is like a big budget remake in some ways of The Trial, that Kafka drama that starred Anthony Perkins and Orson Welles. Except Tom's trial was all in his mind.
Tom's worldwide legion of fans should like it though.