Cameron Crowe Fails (Spoilers, of course)

Rating: Null/10 (29 January 2002)

I know that "Vanilla Sky" is supposed to be a remake of "Abre Los Ojos," which I haven't seen. But I think Cameron Crowe was more influenced by other films and trends when he made this film.
It is usually a good thing for directors to step outside their boundaries, and experiment with new techniques, material, and subject matter. But it doesn't always work. I am not the biggest fan of Cameron Crowe. I wasn't impressed by "Jerry Maguire," which was overly long and clichéd, nor by "Almost Famous," which I found slow and uninvolving (although I know I am clearly alone here.) But I know there was something about these two films that audiences and critics loved, which probably had to do with the amount of heart that Crowe put into them. I could definitely see Crowe's passion in this movie, but it didn't mean the movie was a success.
"Vanilla Sky" plays like bunch of sampled techniques from films that are superior in their experimentation. It seems that Crowe wanted to make his "Requiem for a Dream," "Fight Club," or "The Devil's Advocate." The crafts that he borrows are tired now, and the film never appears like anything more than a failure and exploitation of these methods. The quick cuts, splices, and camera tricks have no punch and fail to grab us. The numerous twists and eventual copouts offered by the plot never have any impact. The film starts out coherently, but I found the first half hour to be just awful--for some reason, in this and the other Crowe films I have mentioned, I was totally uninvolved in the story. I found Tom Cruise's character to be really dull and he left me detached from his interactions with Penelope Cruz. I never felt like I knew who these two characters were or why I should care (or not care) about them. The "car crash" sequence interrupts the weary story but isn't anything special, and I found Cameron Diaz' performance to be too much on the campy side. Many have commended the opening dream sequence, which shows us an empty Times Square in New York City. But I found that it irritatingly resembled an internet or cell phone commercial. There really isn't any imagination to the brief sequence--we have already seen empty streets of once busy places to fill us in that "this is a dream"--the fact that it's Times Square just reminds us that there are thousands of frustrated New Yorkers waiting off camera to go about their business. The scenes involving Cruise's irritation with his broken face are gruesome, but not disturbing enough to equal good moviemaking. These moments are sometimes humorous, and the final sequence is photographed very well, but the answers of the movie are unsatisfying, and make questions and plot points presented earlier in the film irrelevant.
Cameron Crowe was passionate about this film, but this just isn't his field. Grade: D+