Amazon.com: Vanilla Sky reunites director Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire) with über-playboy Tom Cruise, adds another sexy Cruz (Penélope) and Cameron Diaz for good measure, and delivers a wildly entertaining, bizarre venture into erotic science fiction. Adapted near exactly from Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 romantic thriller Open Your Eyes, the film follows David Aames (Cruise) as he falls from his graceful Manhattan perch of inordinate wealth, good looks, and newfound love with Sofia (Cruz) because of severe facial disfigurement in a car accident caused by a suicidal ex-lover (Diaz). What at first promises to be a conventional allegory of redemption via true love is turned on its head as Cruise's character, reduced to wearing a latex mask and spurned by his friends, wins back his princess only after a miracle of plastic surgery restores his former beauty. A series of plot twists follows as waking life, technological advances, and nightmares flip-flop to dizzying effect and David ultimately comes face to face with his own mortality. Despite a final conceit to some vague morality, the appeal of the film is the wonderfully callous message conveyed by the rest of it (money and physical beauty equal happiness) through an unabashed vanity perfectly embodied by Cruise and Cruz. A delicious, decadent treat. --Fionn Meade
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - A Beautiful Film - But Not For Every Taste
Vanilla Sky has been called superficial, vain, over-produced and arrogant, and it is all of those things, I won't deny it. You have to accept and even appreciate these flaws if you're going to enjoy what ... Read More
Rating: - Descartes for the masses: a frozen dream
I suppose what I dislike about this movie is the misuse of cryonics
technology as an asleep and dreaming scheme.
To make an eternally young Tom Cruise sex film out of a
sci fi and philosophic ... Read More
Rating: - Sci-Fi Twist
Whoops, I gave it away, but what the hey. Cameron Crowe's fifth film is brilliantly orchestrated. I watched this film over the course of three days. As each day ended and I was on my way home from work I replayed ... Read More
Rating: - Hate/Love it? I'm on the hater's boat!
All the reviewers who said that this is a movie you love or hate,and I really hated it. It was long, boring, and I just didn't connect with any of the characters. I would have turned it off long before it was over, ... Read More
Rating: - One of my favorites
Original, fun, with a sad unconventional ending. A definite love it or hate it movie. Makes you appreciate what you have rather than taking everything for granted as David Ames does. If you "don't get it" at first, ... Read More
- A Beautiful Film - But Not For Every Taste
- Descartes for the masses: a frozen dream
- Sci-Fi Twist
- Hate/Love it? I'm on the hater's boat!