Vanilla Sky

the one line review:

Open your eyes (and your wallet)

the overview

People who know me know that I have something of a "thing" for Penelope Cruz. Ask my ex-gf - she hated it. PC, as I affectionately like to call her, is unbelievable. In my "Top 5 birds" she is always loitering around the no.1 mark. Needless to say, any film with her in, I'm likely to love.

But this stands on it's own pretty well.

the plot:

David Aames (Cruise) is a rich, handsome and successfuly young man. He has everything, except love. One day he meets Sofia (Cruz) who happens to be the girl of his dreams. They spend one night together, love at first site, blah blah etc. However, the bird he bedded the night previous (Diaz) is a touch miffed about this, so decides to kill herself by driving off a road bridge. With him in the car too. He survives, she doesn't.

Anyway, he becomes disfigured, generally breaks down and goes a bit mad (as you would). Then one day, all is fine again. His face is fixed, he's still with Sofia and it's all hunkydorey.

Til he's up on a murder charge of killing Sofia.

All sounds a bit confusing, right?

Well it is. But it's great.

the verdict:

OK, ignoring the PC thing, this film has some fantastic philosophical ideas floating around in it, and as you know, I love a good philosophical debate with myself. Life, love, happiness, the concept of fate and destiny, the concept of time and mortality, morality, even life itself is in there.

I think for the majority audience many of these ideas will be lost, which is not a bad thing. But for those able to think critically about things, they are able to appreciate the other side to it. Which is good - for the cretins - a fast paced, mindfuck film with two pretty girls (and Tom Cruise for the women) and for those with a couple extra brain cells, an excellent thinker film. The former can go away from the film, have a long hard think about PC or CD and reach for the Kleenex, the latter can have a think about the issues involved, reach for the blog... and then I am sure think about PC and CD and reach for the Kleenex.

This film works. It's ropey in places - Cameron Diaz often overacted her transition between Julia and Sofia which took away from the Sofia character, and the core of the film (love between Cruise and Cruz.. :p) is not hit home at the beginning of the film - the night they spend together it could have been more blatant. We can see why he loves her (I mean, come on, it's PC for crying out loud) but it wasn't immediately obvious why she would fancy him.

But still. I imagine it might be a difficult film to watch and a lot of people might come out asking "WTF was that all about" (in a Crouching Tiger kind of stylee) but that ain't a bad thing.

So yeh, I'd say rent before you buy, but it is a must see.

Oh yeh, almost forgot. You see Penelope Cruz's jubbs too. That's worth �3.75 from BBuster's in anyone's book!

Oh Pene Lope. Please marry me!

All movie reviews