Never bland, but never terribly interesting (or comprehensible)

Rating: 3/10 (3 June 2002)

In an era of big-budget, super-duper special effects movies, a lot of people pine for the old days when plot meant something and characterization was key. Well, look what we get. A convoluted, disinterested absurd piece of pablum that's not worth the celluloid on which it was filmed.
Vanilla Sky is about a dashing young publisher named David Aames (Tom Cruise) who has two women in his life - his "buddy" Julie (Cameron Diaz) and mysterious new woman Sofia (Penelope Cruz), who just happens to be his best friend's girlfriend. David feels he's being stalked by Julie, who wants more than sex, but he can't keep his eyes and hands off Sofia. You can see this is just heading for trouble.
Much of the plot centers around a violent car crash in which David emerges with a disfigured face. What happens after that is quite surreal - kind of like floating in a dream in which at once everything and nothing seems to have meaning. Under such circumstances, one can twist logic and reality into whatever one desires (in this case, "one" would be the screenwriter). Anything can happen and be justified. That's great, but it doesn't always make for a good movie, just as free association doesn't make for a good novel.
To begin with, Cruise himself seems miscast, although ironically so. He's the kind of movie actor who much of the world sees as the cocky, arrogant, preening archetype of male stars, always worried about how they look. And yet here he is with a horribly ugly face - is he trying to tell the world, "Look, I can play creepy-looking, too!" No, Tom, you can't.
And for at least the third movie, I hear Cruise utter these words, or a variation: "I've been set up!" He sure gets set up a lot - see The Firm, this one, and the upcoming Minority Report, to name three. What it all goes back to is his characters' inability to believe they themselves have done anything wrong, ever.
Secondly, there's a huge lack of chemistry between any of the three leads, especially between Cruise and Cruz. I'm sure there are legions of people who believe Penelope Cruz is the cat's pajamas, but don't count me among them. I didn't find her particularly attractive or alluring in the movie. I won't waste space picking apart her obvious physical issues, but please - let's not place her on some goddess pedestal. But for a couple that apparently fell for each other off the set, Cruise and Cruz don't seem particularly enamored of each other on it. Yes, they make goo-goo eyes to each other. Snoresville.
And that plot! It's one thing to have twists and turns, each leading to more questions and mysteries, and it's quite another to have each twist cancel out the last twist. The movie kept negating itself. I know it was trying to show that the line between dreams and reality can be seriously blurred, but you can't have each scene render the last one irrelevant. Instead of being clever, all this does is confuse and frustrate the viewer.
About the only real spark of life comes from David's best friend Brian, played by Jason Lee. And you know, when Jason Lee's the only one making things happen, you know you got yourself a crappy movie. There are supposed heavyweights in this movie - Cruise, Diaz - and your best performance is by Jason Lee of Mallrats and Almost Famous (another Cameron Crowe movie, like this flop)? Geez!
I'm glad I didn't see this in the theater, although I might not have been so critical if I had (you know, it's the classic "I spent $8 on this, so I'm gonna like it!" rhetoric). I don't think Cruise's career is in any kind of jeopardy, as evidenced by his usual $20 million paycheck. He might want to develop an additional facial expression or two, however.
This is a bizarre, pointless movie that seems to take delight in its tortured script, wallowing in its own nonsense.