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Vanilla Sky Customer Reviews (76 - 78 of 96 Reviews)

second rate cliff-notes
ABRE LOS OJOS was a great movie, so why did they spend untold millions to make this clunky, pretentious and annoying remake that completely fails from beginning to end? Terrible acting, embarrassing dialogue, ill conceived scene transitions make this film particularly painful to digest, but things really get nail-bitingly bad when they start to overexplain the "philosophy" behind the story, reducing the mess further from an awful remake to second rate cliff-notes.

A 'Sweet and Sour' Masterpiece
Like other non conventional movies before it, "Vanilla Sky" takes a few viewings before its true impact sinks in.

Once it does, you realize the film is a multi-textured masterpiece that offers,underneath it's bizarre style and fractured time structure, a number of deeply felt life lessons about love, friendship, sex and dreams.

Tom Cruise gives the best performance of his career (the scene in which he phones Sofia (Penelope Cruz) and leaves the "our old friend 'Benny the Dog' message on her machine, is perhaps Cruise's finest piece of acting to date..

The monolouge given by Cruise's Life Extention Tech Support representative (brilliantly played by Noah Taylor) in which Taylor explains how Cruise's dream life was fashioned by the pop culture icons of his youth, is moviemaking at its finest.

The entire supporting cast (Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Jason Lee, and Kurt Russell) is simply sensational.

I've avoiding discussing actual details of the plot since "Vanilla Sky" is a movie that has to be seen and digested to be fully appreciated.

Cameron Crowe directs from his own screenplay (based on the Spanish film "Abre Los Ojos") and does a masterful job.

The properly eclectic soundtrack features, among others, Bob Dylan, REM, Paul Mc Cartney, Radiohead and the Beach Boys.

******
The DVD presentation is excellent and includes two featurettes
("Prelude to a Dream" and "Hitting it Hard" ("Hard" is 10 minute documentary that covers the 'Vanilla Sky' American-European press tour in which Cruise is shown being worshipped by adoring fans from the UK to South Korea).

Note--there is also a "hidden" special feature that contain a 6 minute "gag" reel of outtakes...to acccess it: go to the "still photos" section...highlight "special features" and then click on the Tom Cruise mask.)

Crowe owes fans of the film a special edition DVD sometime in the future that might include a video commentary by the director and stars (ala the new Jerry MacGuire DVD) and the full length "Hitting It Hard" which shows why Cruise is today's quintessential movie star).

A beautifully flawed masterpiece
A friend of mine recommended Vanilla Sky to me, saying that it is so mind-trippy its great, so with that recommendation I honestly didn't know what to expect. Another friend of mine told me it's reminiscent of The Matrix and Dark City in terms of questioning reality, so I took in Vanilla Sky not knowing what to expect, and I was happily surprised at the results. Tom Cruise plays a self-conceited, wealthy, handsome, playboy who has the world at his fingertips (he's really playing himself), but one day his world comes crashing down when he is left horribly scarred and disfigured in a car crash involving his suicidal ex-lover played devilishly by Cameron Diaz. Eventually, his face is seemingly repaired by a miracle of new age plastic surgery, and he is reunited with his one true love played by Penelope Cruz. But soon, things start falling apart even more so, and Cruise discovers that all is not what it seems, and there is a higher power in control. Tom Cruise is rather good in this film, as is the other Cruz, both of whom give off great chemistry together, and Jason Lee (alumnus of many of Kevin Smith's films) is good as Cruise's best friend, but I thought that Kurt Russel was wasted in his role. All in all though, the ending of the film may have been the biggest flaw, which is why some people absolutely hated the film, and while Vanilla Sky isn't perfect by any means, it is clearly worth a look.

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