Shut your eyes

Rating: 4/10 (1 February 2002)

***Possible spoilers
I specifically say POSSIBLE spoilers because, although there are a lot of twists in Vanilla Sky to give away, there are few the movie doesn't give away itself. Particularly the final twist is telegraphed way too early and obviously by showing a completely out-of-place tv-clip about cryogenics (the frequent hinting at David Aames' fear of heights is a pretty good example too). And since so much of the final third of the movie is spent on twisting and turning this is pretty unforgivable. It gets even worse when you have a reasonable ammount of twist movie viewing experiences under your belt. Several twists seem to have been lifted right out of Total Recall, Dark City and/ or The Matrix. Vanilla Sky furthermore shows little understanding of how twists work, throwing in more than a few for their own sake (because we like twists, right??). In Fight Club or The Sixth Sense they add levels of depth, in Lost Highway they mostly seem to support an all-pervading feel of dread and unease, here they are there because we like the aforementioned films. Cameron Crowe is not David Lynch and he should have known it.
As matter of fact, the twists began annoying me so much around 90 minutes into the film, they actually became unintendedly hilarious. What made it even funnier, for me, was the pretentiousness with which Cameron Crowe (a usually fine director, plus one of the two directors who got a decent performance out of Tom Cruise - in Jerry Maguire, the other is PT Anderson for Magnolia) presents it all. It has a fractured flashback structure, adds far too much weight to its ludricrous closing scenes (and many other ones, all scenes in which Aames wears his 'prosthetic' for example) and has the need to explicitate its themes from time to time. He also seems to be under the illusion that this is a surreal film. It, however, didn't convince me. The clunky exposition near the ending is too final for me. Crowe doesn't bring any duality into play. Had I walked out of it thinking maybe even the explanation about what happened to Aames was just a figment of his imagination (thus opening the movie to a host of new explanations again), I, being a twist fan too, would have liked it a lot better. Then there's his popculture fetishism, which, after the umpteenth misplaced song, kinda gets on your nerves (I WOULD have enjoyed some references to the movies this is stealing from, though). Also, there's surprisingly little humour (`Cryo-tainment.' is a gloriously bad example).
In fact, looking at this 'cover version' of the Spanish film Abre les Oyos you get the impression the entire film is nothing but a miscalculated vanity project for Tom Cruise for, while he may spend half the running time either wearing a mask or scar tissue make-up, this film is all about him and his performance. He does get to show off a little more range than usual, but his character is no distinctly unlikable you never care for him. His David Aames start off as an extremely cocky, spoilt little brat oozing fake charm and, after the accident, turns into an equally detestable self-pitying man, who seems to care more about the fact that he's lost his looks than his life. Cruise can do the cocky, spoilt little brat oozing fake charm part, but falls dramatically short during his later scenes. His disfigured Aames seems to be modelled after Jack Nicholson's brilliant over-acting turn from The Shining and his man-in-the-mask scenes with Kurt Russell are so grotesquely played it's embarrassing.
Yes, I know the film is basically a collection of pop-culture elements, but does that justify this film being this simple and empty? Yes, getting Times Square blocked off for shooting is impressive, too bad the scene isn't. So, are there any redeeming features? Well for me there were only a few: Cameron Diaz is very good and both Jason Lee and Russell are fine. And that's about it. Not that it's a technically inept film, but it never rises above the average in those respects. Another (fatal) point: the romance between Cruise and Cruz never generates any chemistry on-screen. Maybe it's the way Aames shamelessly steals Cruz' character from his best friend, or maybe it's because she falls for someone like him, either way there's something unlikable about their relationship. Thus, the movie fails to engage either as a head-scratching or a romantic thriller.
The whole idea of interweaving reality and dreams is (still) a very interesting one, but it's been done both before and better. Vanilla Sky is a movie that is pretentious but looks down upon its audience at the same time.
Rating: 4/10