“ I want to wake up! Tech support!”
Cameron Crowe’s remake of Alejandro Amenabar’s ‘Open Your Eyes’ is his attempt at making an uplifting, schmaltzy, surreal Lynchian flick. It’s like a mixture of Vampire’s Kiss, Mulholland Drive, Total Recall, and a generic coming-of-age romcom.
When spoiled, rich, young, self-centered, narcissistic, pretty boy magazine exec David Aames disfigures his face in a car wreck (caused by a suicidal ex-fling he wronged), the injury gravely wounds his ego, pride, and sense of self-worth. As his life starts to implode in on itself , David is forced to grapple with questions of sanity, reality, and identity triggering a quest of self-discovery.
This is definitely Tom Cruise’s oddest film. Cruise is actually not great here ( He’s very good, but not great. I’m not used to that). He leans heavily into his character’s eccentricities and tends to go more for the silly and exaggerated. One of the reasons Cruise likely took on the role is because his character wears a creepy face/mannequin mask for a good deal of the run time (and when the mask’s off he looks like his face is starting to melt thanks to some meh prosthetics). It’s not hard to guess that Cruise might have viewed the role as a challenge. Well, he puts forth a valiant effort at least.
Vanilla Sky has a pretty solid cast including Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Jason Lee, Timothy Spall, and Kurt Russel. Many other notable names appear in blink-and-you’ll miss-them roles (Steven Spielberg, Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, and Johnny Galecki). The dialogue is pretty bad at times, the editing and pacing is often off (probably deliberately so), and the film looks like an early 2000s sitcom (think Friends).
Vanilla Sky isn’t bad, but it also isn’t good (By minute 12 I was totally lost.) It’s different, odd, unsettling, messy, and interesting. Vanilla Sky is not as smart, clever, or surprising as it thinks it is, but it’s still worth a watch for lovers of WTF Cinema.
2.5 STARS
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