I have a personal boycott on Tom Cruise movies. Only occasionally will I break this boycott if my curiosity gets to a certain level for a movie. This never happens when the movie first comes out, it’s only after years when I find myself still interested in the movie.
This happened with Vanilla Sky, and last night it happened with Eyes Wide Shut. The thing about Eyes Wide Shut is that it’s directed by Stanley Kubrick, and since the movie was available with Amazon HD rentals on my TiVo, I couldn’t resist.
As I expected the movie was really great. It was surprising and lush with just the right amount of sex. Considering the topic, there could easily have been too much. The movie is a visual pleasure. The lighting and scenery and sets are absolutely great and very dramatic. The use of red and blue was wonderful. Stanley Kubrick is never afraid to take full advantage of color, but without getting in the way of the movie.
But Tom Cruise’s acting was so horrible. Nicole Kidman’s was bad too. They had all these monologues and apparently Tom Cruise believes that when people are stressed or sad they look down and shake and talk really slowly. He does that in every movie I’ve seen him in. The bad acting is so obvious that I think Kubrick must have had an ulterior motive for casting Tom and Nicole.
The story gets a bit wonky at the end. There’s kind of an odd resolution of plot points that don’t really seem to need to be resolved. The movie requires that you give up your normal emotional reactions to things. Even the characters don’t express normal emotions. But then at the end, they get sort of teary and emotionally aware and it’s suddenly very out of character. You look at the screen saying, “Why are you crying?”, “Why are you concerned about that?” It’s annoying that these emotions are badly acted to boot, sort of like when someone is faking crying to be manipulative.
However, despite this, Eyes Wide Shut is a must see. It’s a great experience. The acting being bad almost accentuates the movie, rather than destroys it.