Crowe's psychobabble. Review on Vanilla Sky Movie

Finally the hit pair of Crowe and Tom Cruise r back ,in the much awaited movie of this winter.Infact this movie was all over tabloid for all reasons except the movie.First the expectations were running high to match their earlier hit ''Jerry Maguire'',and then the offscreen real life Crui(z)e affair ,was expected to transcend on the screen( and it did) .Okay , to sum up the movie ,it indeed was more bizzarely different than I expected ,compared to the earlier Crowe's movies. This is more of a dark, illusionary sci-fi psychological erotic supposed-to-be thriller than just a plain straight forward simple movie.

The initial story is more of a fatal attraction ,with Cameroon ,not able to stand the fact that CRuise is head over heels with CRuz ,(and how can one not be?) This leads her to take that sadistic step of ending her life along with that of too-good-to-be-true life of Cruise ,in the usual hindi style of ''agar mujhe nahi mila tho ,woh kisi ka bhi nahi ho sakta ''.But Cruise survives to lead a life with a horribly disfigured face 'n the rest of the movie is for u to figure out as to can Cruz accept him 'n how CRuise copes up with it.The movie from here on , stumps most of us, as it moves onto a different dimension taking wierd twists 'n even more surprsiing is the ending ,which made my friend ask me '' abey ,yeh kya hua, phillum to khatam hi ho gaya, sala??''.HAahha.....This movie reminded me sometimes even of MI-2 with all those latex masking effects.

The problem is ,this movie was far too lengthy 'n indulged in gr8 depths to explore the jilted mindset of a victim who undergoes a sudden change in life,due to some trauma 'n therby leaving the viewers lurching in dark as to what is happening sometimes,with scenes jumbled up 'n shuttling back 'n forth from reality to virtual world.Initially I loved some scenes that made me experience or foxed me into thinking as to, is it a scene of present or dream or flashback ,'n is quite an experience if u really dont have to connect to the whole storyline but just want to relish scene by scene.('n sometimes complimented well by soundtrack).

But Crowe never makes an attempt to involve the audience 'n is entangled in his own web of ''fantastic imaginations and lucid dream''.In the end there is an ttempt to explain as to why was it so self centred around the charecter's imaginations ,but its too late for restlesss viewers to care much abt it.

This movie is supposed to be a remake of some Spanish movie ,and the same lead female cast of Penelope Cruz is carried forward here as the vanilla girl .And she with her dusky Spanish complexion looks ravishingly smashing .But Diaz in her role is better off in the acting front 'n is hot 'n an absolute cheeseburger. Her role is best described in one liner in the movie as ''the saddest ever girl to hold a martini''.

As for Cruise ,he is flamboyantly brilliant in couple of scenes 'n pedestally pathetic in some others 'n most probably may 've given the wierdest performance of his career.Kurt Russell in his short role is good 'n nothing much to talk of Jason Lee.

''Vanilla sky'' can be the name of a cocktail ,with ingredients like ''Eyes wide shut'', ''Magnolia'', ''Unbreakable'' ,a bit of ''Devils Advocate'',''The gift'', all shaken 'n stirred together.You will be caught offguard tangentially if u happend to bank on Crowe's previous reputation.Most of the times u will be left with two unplesant options of either ''scratching ur head'' or ''gnashing ur teeth''.