Mediocre, hollywood rip off of "Abre los ojos"

Rating: Null/10 (23 February 2003)

What's the purpose of doing a remake of such a recent film, which is in fact great, and not even improving it at all? Easy answer: money making. Just throw in a couple of top-notch actors, a reknown director and the money will just come popping in. Doesn't matter if the movie has a dozen of plot holes in it, or if one of its main characters can barely speak english (that goes for Penelope Cruz), a fancy name and fancy actors will do it work. "Abre los ojos" was a great movie and it had that wonderful and attractive flavour of underground or amateur movies, totally unknown to the Hollywood scene. I mean, the original movie plot actually worked, it didn't have plot holes (or at least not much) and Penelope did sound hot. Crowe just messed up the whole story, adding scenes and symbolism of its own, making it completely hollywoodean. I just can't understand how could Alejandro Amenabar stand Crowe's destruction of one of his best movies. I guess it was the entrance price for the Hollywood Valley (Tom Cruise produced both Vanilla Sky and The Others). A real shame!