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Vanilla Sky
Paramount Pictures

7.2 based on 33 reviews Read critic reviews How did we calculate this? based on 112 votes Read user comments Rate this movie

FILM:

• Almost Famous
• Elizabethtown
• Jerry Maguire
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MPAA RATING: R for sexuality and strong language

Starring Tom Cruise, Penélope Cruz, Kurt Russell, Cameron Diaz, Jason Lee, Noah Taylor, Timothy Spall, and Tilda Swinton

Snowboarding through life, David Aames (Cruise) appears to lead a charmed life. In one night David meets a girl of his dreams and loses her by making a small mistake. Thrust unexpectedly onto a roller-coaster ride of romance, comedy, suspicion, love, sex and dreams, David finds himself on a mind-bending search for his soul and discovers the precious, ephemeral nature of true love. (Paramount Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Cameron Crowe Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil (film Abre Los Ojos)
DIRECTED BY:	Cameron Crowe
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: May 21, 2002  Video: May 21, 2002  Theatrical: December 14, 2001
RUNNING TIME:	115 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

Cameron Diaz picked up a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

83

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

A mostly fascinating, often frustrating, boldly uncommercial Hollywood version of a boldly uncommercial art film. It's very atypical of the previous work of both director and star, and it's as personal a film, I suspect, as Cruise will ever make.

80

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Highly entertaining, erotic science-fiction thriller that takes Mr. Crowe into Steven Spielberg territory.

78

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It's a film that you can take home and chew over later, both abrasive in its loudness and reflective in its fleeting, feminine moments of silence. Well done.

75

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

An involving, sweetly touching love story, buoyed by Crowe's natural, poetic dialogue and his knack for writing characters (especially women) who feel like real people instead of plot devices.

75

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This is the kind of movie you don't want to analyze until you've seen it two times. Now that I've seen it twice, I think I understand it, or maybe not. Certainly it's entertaining as it rolls along.

70

Variety Todd McCarthy

The picture has vitality, a fine cast and excellent craft

70

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Crowe's tantalizing film sticks with you.

63

USA Today Mike Clark

What works in a quirky foreign film can look silly with expansive Hollywood treatment. Crowe is smart enough to know this, so it's baffling he chose Vanilla over richer cinematic tastes.

63

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Visually dazzling but ultimately dizzying ride, a trippy suspenser that gets tripped up on its own deja vu voodoo.

63

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

Crowe's chilliest movie. In part this is by design. Like "Open Your Eyes," to which Crowe is mostly faithful, Vanilla Sky is a head trip that merges thriller, romance and science-fiction elements while playing with our notions of dreams and reality.

63

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Has moments that are eerily beautiful and genuinely moving -- and some that are surprisingly vulgar.

63

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

I admire Cameron Crowe for daring to write and direct a movie as strange as Vanilla Sky. I lament the casting of Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz in the leads.

60

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

It reeks of unearned profundity, but I found it entertaining.

58

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Lost in this beguiling labyrinth, Vanilla Sky is more fascinating as a bit of evidence than as a movie -- and ultimately less pleasing than most audiences will want.

50

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Like an over-packed three-scoop cone -- it melts into a mess while we're still slurping away.

50

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

For better or worse, Vanilla Sky is a genuine, albeit jejune, statement of star consciousness -- blustery with self-awe and feverish with cataclysmic self-doubt.

50

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

The film's aim -- to dazzle and inspire -- is sapped by Cruise's vein-popping, running-the-marathon performance.

50

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Crowe, for his part, is decency itself, but unlike Amenábar he's a pop romantic with no stomach or aptitude for noir.

50

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Though Vanilla Sky is smoothly and professionally done, even audiences who haven't seen the original will sense there is something off in the translation.

50

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Resembles a fast-and-flashy variation on "The Sixth Sense," with touches of "The Matrix" as a bonus.

40

Washington Post Desson Thomson

For all the filmmakers' efforts, this project is something of an artistic albatross. It's a conundrum that doesn't get answered until a sort of help-the-audience Cliffs Notes final scene, in which we learn Everything. But by then, more than a few of us may be wondering, was it all really worth the trouble?

40

New Times (L.A.) Robert Wilonsky

Crowe renders David's dream (and its accompanying nightmare) so literal we can't help but leave the theater feeling as though we've been lectured to, told how to feel and what to think. And for an audience, that's a bit of a nightmare.

40

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Crowe preserves the original film's plot twists and turns, but his version lumbers when it should be whipping along, daring you to keep up. The wall-to-wall pop music soundtrack eventually becomes oppressive, and Cruise's oily smile doesn't really constitute a characterization.

40

Film Threat Gareth Von Kallenbach

My suggestion is to avoid this film and instead rent Open Your Eyes (Abre Los Ojos) the film upon which Vanilla Sky was based.

38

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The title doesn't hint at the unsavory mess the film actually is.

38

Boston Globe Jay Carr

May not emerge as the biggest disaster of the holiday movie season, if only because we haven't yet seen all the other year-end films. But it is a huge high-energy misfire, bringing Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz, and Cameron Crowe to earth with a thud.

33

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

If Crowe's eyes are open, he seems to have directed most of Vanilla Sky with his mind wide shut.

30

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Probably the most garishly masochistic star turn since Mel Gibson's "The Man Without a Face." It could also be the most baroque chick flick ever made, the freakazoid spawn of "An Affair to Remember" and "The Matrix."

30

Slate David Edelstein

It's no wonder that Crowe can't generate any real feeling. The narrative is alien to him on every level. The ear-grating dialogue is a good indication that he didn't know what he was doing; he's usually pitch-perfect.

30

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Its tone is unquenchably pretentious, and its scale is overblown.

20

Time Richard Corliss

Every ambitious picturemaker should be allowed one wild misfire at no lasting cost to his reputation. Crowe (Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) can now put this aside and go back to making good films.

20

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Who would have thought that Cameron Crowe had a movie as bad as Vanilla Sky in him? It's a punishing picture, a betrayal of everything that Crowe has proved he knows how to do right.

10

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Overblown and idiotic, this new "erotic thriller" is neither erotic nor thrilling; it's long, boring and self-indulgent.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 112 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Eric T gave it a9:
This movie is amazing, although it's sometimes intense and painful to the point of being hard to watch The negative reviews are hilarious; they remind me of AI, in particular the complaints about "too large of scope". If you can't wrap your head around epic, high-concept scifi, then go watch Animal House or something. This is a fantastically made and riveting film. Those scoring it on par with "The Hottie and Nottie" is deeply clueless.

Marc J gave it a10:
One of the best movies I have seen. Raises many questions and evokes even more feelings.

Michael L gave it a5:
A film which makes an attempt to pattern itself on the fantasy vs. reality films that had become popular at the turn of the new millennium - David Fichner's "Fight Club" and M. Night Shamalan's "Sixth Sense" both from 1999, Christopher Nolan's "Momento" from 2000, and David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" released the following year (all of which don't surpass the reigning king of this genre when Terry Gilliam released his 1985 masterpiece "Brazil") - by no means fails in this respect since I found it both entertaining and intriguing for the most part, but is noticeably long and certainly may confuse the average '2hr-max-movie-goer'. Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz both stand out playing their respective, 'good gal/bad gal roles and Jason Lee is quite appealing as the best friend of our dashing lead Tom Cruise. Yet Cruise may be viewed as stretching this performance given the physical challenges that are demanded. I hesitate to reveal these challenges to those that have not seen the picture as they are indeed the focal point of the plot. Many good things like the witty Cameron Crowe retrospective soundtrack that is weaved into clever culture references and tributes which are indeed enjoyable and even necessary to solve the riddle presented in 'what's is going on?' scenario of the main character's pressing dilemma which may not be easy to access with a single viewing. But still the ride can be entertaining as Tom runs away and into trouble as he often does in quasi-action films that are laced with mystery and intrigue like Sydney Pollack's 1993 "The Firm", Brian De Palma's 1996 "Mission Impossible" and even the more cerebrally dark, "Eyes Wide Shut" from Stanley Kubrick. As noted by many educated critics as well as the tasteless tabloids Mr. Cruise may be biting off more than he can chew as he dives into the land of independent production. I applaud Tom for his efforts and are rooting for his 'comeback' yet do believe that his choice for future roles should include a return to comedic territory as a deviation/diversion to selecting elaborate/complicated efforts which could be prove a bit too risky and result in a poor reception at the box office.

Carlos S gave it a10:
A wonderful movie. Cameron Crowe really gets the perspective of the original "abre los ojos" and focus all the main ideas in this picture. Vanilla Sky make humans realised the meanning of their existence, it try to achieve a new level of understanding of the human mind by incorporate anormal fenoms in cuatidan life. As Cameron Crow said about the movie. "life, sex, emotion, sadness, love, crazyness, dead".This is Vanilla Sky.

Steven. gave it an8:
Cameron Crowe really has outdone himself in some of the movies he's made. This movie is no exception. Let me just make a personal note before I make this review. I'm one of those people that saw this movie for the first time and understood everything, and something I have to note about is that this movie is a true Cameron Crowe masterpiece if you actually understand it. I really went through a lot of emotions when I watched this movie, this is one of the more cinematic movies I've seen. From the music to the very clever lines, and to the story pulling all together on one very well made elevator scene. This movie has a really cool vibe to it from the moment it starts. Plus the ending is mind blowing. I really love Paul Mccartney's song played in the credits, it really brings you down to earth after seeing such a breathtaking ending. If you want to watch this movie go ahead, I think that some of the critics were a little rough on this movie. Heres a hint to watching this though, when you reach a scene that shows Tom in an Elevator with a man in a suit, pay attention to this scene, because it explains everything about this movie. Happy Watching.

Andrew O gave it a10:
Superb, highly moving and deep when understood. Vanilla Sky is not a movie to watch just once and requires your full attention. Not everyone will get it; few will appreciate it on the first viewing. This is not a "Tom Cruise" movie, but definately one to watch several times if you enjoy complex movies.

Donna S. gave it an8:
I'm still confused by whatever went on in that movie, but I loved it, and I was blown away by the ending which was made even spectacular by Sigur Ros' '"Njosnavelin". This movie toyed a lot with my emotions, and I don't think I can spite Tom Cruise for his role as David Aames, even if I loathe him (Tom) with a passion as of now.

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