Tom's Cruise on the Character Ark

Rating: 5/10 (11 August 2005)

First, let me say, I love Tom -- he may be nut, but he's fun as hell and a hell of an actor. And yet the character he plays again and again -- the vain, hard-ass goof who learns important life lessons and squirts a few tears is now no more than a cipher -- there's no need to develop any character and no need to demonstrate how that character changes. In the beginning of WooWs he's less a character than a collection of irritating clichés (he mocks his daughter's dinner as weird -- why? -- because there's some tofu in it? Has Spielberg been to a mall food court since 1980?) And he is redeemed how? Because he saves his kid? Hell, a vole will save it's kid, that don't make him no hero. We kind of have to assume all the other Tom Cruise roles where they actually do bother to deal with character (especially Jerry McGuire) for this movie to make any sense from a character point of view. Hell, it's Jerry McGuire up there -- now I get it. And Dakota Fanning is that little kid with the glasses -- ah, I see -- he thinks he's got it all figured out and then he learns to love! Yes, it's all so clear.
Memo to Koepp and Spielberg -- please build your next film around a character and not a star.