Vanilla Smug ...or....Cocktail Meets Donnie Darko

Rating: 4/10 (21 May 2006)

..sorry..just can't get past Tom Cruise..it's hard not to bail out of this one during the first hour or so, when every line of dialog is smug, contrived, and designed solely to prop up Cruises character as God's gift to women...oh hell..to ALL of us mere mortals..he's SO good looking..SO clever..SO smart..SO Tom Cruise.
The movie DOES get more interesting in an other-worldly/ Donnie Darko kinda way, except then you have to deal with Cruise chewing up the scenery in an over-acting tour de force.
See where I'm going here?? This would have been a better movie without Tom Cruise...in my humble opinion, "understating" always beats "overacting", something beyond Cruises comprehension, based on his body of work. Tom Cruise is a generally lousy actor who is ALWAYS playing "Tom Cruise" on and off the camera, and to give him his props, he is a very successful "personality" (but so too is Paris Hilton...). ....gotta go..renting COCKTAIL again tonite..kinda like a bad car crash, you just can't look away...poor Tom Cruise-as-COCKTAIL bartender, he just CAN'T even wander into a 7-11 without every member of the female gender-clerks, shoppers, vendors, nuns, whatever... shimmying out of their panty hose!!! Men commit suicide!! Lesbians IMMEDIATELY become straight! HE"S JUST THAT GOOD LOOKING!!!! REALLY!!!ASK HIM!!!HE IS!!!!