Flak Magazine: Review of Vanilla Sky, 12-19-01

Let's talk about failure. Because failure, at its best, can be a delirious proposition in entertainment. Witness A.I., which was a box office and, perhaps by Speilberg's standards, a critical failure. The film's final hour is an unfortunate mess, and the final half hour of this hour, with its myriad false endings, is bad to the point of insult. But that first hour: magic. A noble, risky attempt, all and all, and a failure. Noble failures abound: the final season of "Twin Peaks"; Weezer's second album, Pinkerton. Some people think that most of Shakespeare's "romance" plays, like "Cymbeline" and "The Tempest," are noble failures, overlong and indulgent but, as always, transcendent just when you've given up hope.

Vanilla Sky is not a noble failure. Nor, despite some of its pomo stylings, is it a risky failure. It's safe, it's too long, it's badly written, mostly badly acted, and, worst of all, its message is either incomprehensible or commonplace — it's a boring failure. It's Cameron Crowe's worst movie by such an almost unfathomably wide margin.

The story? Something to do with arrogance and materialism and the deadening effect of pop culture on the collective brainpan. Cruise plays David Aames, a self-satisfied and juvenile heir to a magazine empire locked in a battle of wills with his frosty board of directors, who want him squeezed out. He has a "fuck buddy," Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz), whom he callously leaves off the guest list for his 33rd birthday party. She attends anyway, but his attentions are all on Sofia Serrano (Penelope Cruz), mainly because he has decided (moments after seeing her) that she is "the last guileless person in New York City."

David and Sofia spend a platonic night together at Sofia's apartment, spooning on the couch and drawing pictures of each other, and this looks like love, folks, but the next morning the increasingly psycho Julie shows up outside Sofia's and offers David both a ride and a quickie. And off they go. You can guess what comes next; you've seen the trailer.

There is plenty of ado after the car ride of destiny/doom, much of it having to do with Aames' redemption after a life of callous disregard for others; the darkness of desire and its connection to fate; fear of death; beauty as fetish; and the relation of dreams and the unconscious to our lives. All interesting ideas, and they're thrown into Vanilla Sky's soup and left to float there. The audience's task is to poke at these ideas and relate them to the journey of this cocky and unlikable man. "I feel like I've been here for eight years," a man behind me said during the credits. Either he was bored blind, or had exhausted substantial energy puzzling the various themes of the film. Which do you think it was?

The ending is ostensibly a surprise, but there are much greater surprises in Vanilla Sky. One: Penelope Cruz is still being aggressively sold to us, despite her lack of whatever charm/magnetism she might evince when allowed to speak in her native tongue. In this film, as in Blow and Captain Corelli's Mandolin, she reveals herself as a beautiful, empty vessel. A Spanish Ali MacGraw. She is Vanilla Sky: The Actress. Two: Cameron Crowe is responsible for the dialogue in this film, which drops from the character's mouths like lead hiccups. It spoils nothing to report that Cameron Diaz exclaims, at a critical point in the film, "I swallowed your come! That means something!" Cameron Crowe's singular gift is crafting dialogue. Rent any of his well-made films, like Say Anything and Almost Famous, and you'll bear witness to Crowe's ability to mimic the rhythms of everyday speech. Even in his less adept outings, like Singles, there are tremendous moments between characters that are possible only because the dialogue is so strong — the first-date nervous chatter between Campbell Scott and Kyra Sedgwick, the hilariously sung messages Matt Dillon leaves on his ex's answering machine. The latter is a funny and sweet mea culpa, and only Crowe could imagine it. But, amazingly, there's not a single moment in Vanilla Sky in which the actors didn't sound hollow.

The biggest surprise is Cruise. As a producer on the film, he must be held accountable for agreeing to this script, making the film and releasing it in its current state. Because there is no visible reason why Vanilla Sky should have been made. David Aames is not a character of merit or interest, no matter what metaphysical hoops he is forced through. The story's muddled incoherence is not a sign of deeper subtextual meaning. This movie that traffics in nearly a dozen themes is very nearly idea-free. And Cruise, perhaps sensing the futility, squeezes out one of his pummeling performances, all veins and sweat, and it doesn't work. Cruise has grown as an actor, but this is a step back to the grim Born on the Fourth of July days. I don't want to pin the burden of blame on him — I'd rather blame Crowe — but like Ben Stiller says: "It's Tom's world — we just live in it.

— Christopher Hickman (hickatz at mindspring dot com)