More about this DVD  •  DVD Info  •  Movie Main Page  •  Message Board

Vanilla Sky is a remake of the 1997 Spanish film Abre Los Ojos, about a wealthy yuppie playboy who must reexamine his life after a jealous lover drives him into an accident, killing herself and leaving his face badly mangled. Later a series of strange occurrences lead him to question his own sanity when he believes he is framed in a murder investigation, some characters switch identities, and the entire fabric of reality seems to be collapsing around him. The film is structured as an intricate puzzle, forcing the main character to determine what is real and what is an illusion. Some of the science fiction plot turns may seem inspired by The Matrix, but in fact Abre Los Ojos was made a few years earlier and is actually more reminiscent of Total Recall without the gratuitous violence, or more specifically the writings of Philip K. Dick that the Schwarzenegger film was loosely based upon.

In many respects Vanilla Sky is a direct, often shot-for-shot remake of the original Spanish film. Its plot structure follows the source material religiously down to the letter, and almost all of the most arresting images and scenes are copied with little or no change at all. Vanilla Sky is, however, a bigger, more ambitious film. It has bigger stars, a much bigger budget, better pacing, and a couple of new subplots that flesh out the story's themes in a more effective fashion. The best example of this distinction can be found in the opening scene of each film. In Abre Los Ojos, the lead character has a dream that he drives into the center of a populated city and finds that he is totally alone in the world. The discovery is revealed in a simple but elegant crane shot pulling away from the character to a wide view of the deserted city streets. Vanilla Sky opens the same way, but the city in question is the great New York itself and Cruise goes running right into the center of an empty Times Square, screaming while being bombarded by a montage of hollow advertisements for products that cannot fill his life. The original was classily effective in its own right, but the new version is a bold, hypnotic scene that elevates the concept to the next, most outrageous level.

The downside to all of this is that where the original film fails, the remake fails in a much grander fashion. Abre Los Ojos was a clever little thriller with some interesting themes, but borrowed most of its ideas from a variety of other sources and played like an extended Twilight Zone episode. Vanilla Sky, by expanding and enlarging the story, exposes these flaws and often comes across as pretentious and overblown. Cameron Crowe tries to litter the film with a string of clues to the narrative puzzle, but the result is that he badly overplays the dream metaphor and makes the whole story feel heavy-handed. The original film also stumbled in its last act by spelling out too many of the answers to the story's mysteries. Crowe exasperates this structural problem by adding a new "explainer" character who takes Cruise (and hence also the audience) aside and walks him step-by-step through the entire story. It is a well-meaning device, to help the slower members of the audience catch up with all the plot twists, but it is also very insulting to anyone who has been paying attention and utterly ruins the ambiguity and mystery that the film had been building until that point.

Spanish actress Penelope Cruz reprises her role from the original film as the lead character's second love interest. Cruz is a big star in Spain and has been branded one of Hollywood's new "It" girls, but personally I do not understand her appeal. I find her unattractive and whatever tiny shred of charm she may have had when speaking Spanish is lost in her garbled English. Nevertheless, she and Tom Cruise struck it off on the movie's set and had a rather well publicized extramarital affair. Unfortunately, their off-screen relationship does not translate at all into onscreen chemistry. The flirtation between the two characters is completely unconvincing, especially when seen in stark contrast to the real chemistry that Cruise had been generating with Cameron Diaz earlier in the movie.

One of the new layers that director Crowe attempts to add to the film is a series of references to pop culture and its effect on the American soul. This is both an asset and a detriment. Crowe has impeccable taste in music and in many respects the songs he chooses for the soundtrack are an effective mirror for the inner turmoil that the characters feel. There are just as many other instances, however, when he overdoes it and the music sounds misplaced, inappropriate, or just plain overbearing. When the Beach Boys start wailing "Good Vibrations" over a climactic scene, the movie's hold on the audience becomes much more tenuous.

This is a frustrating film to be sure, well intentioned but deeply flawed. Still, I must give credit to any filmmaker who attempts to create a movie about ideas. That is such a rare and refreshing conceit in these days of lowbrow teen comedies and muscle-headed action franchises. Vanilla Sky certainly has lots of ideas. It is a movie about vanity, identity, mortality, loyalty, reality, illusion, perception, wealth, powerlessness, and the consequences for one's actions. It has some terrific witty dialogue and impressive supporting performances from Cameron Diaz, Jason Lee, and Kurt Russell. I also award bonus points to any movie with cameo appearances from both Alicia Witt and Tilda Swinton, two of my favorite actresses, however underutilized they may be. During most of its run, Vanilla Sky is a lovely dream, even if at the end we are forced to awaken and realize that it doesn't entirely hold together.

Video: How Does The Disc Look?

The movie is presented in its theatrical 1.85:1 aspect ratio with anamorphic enhancement. This is a terrific, razor- sharp transfer with excellent color reproduction and rich black level. It sports the type of vivid, almost three-dimensional appearance that the DVD format promises but too often does not deliver. John Toll's striking cinematography is represented flawlessly. I detected no compression errors or other visual artifacts.

Audio: How Does the Disc Sound?

The film's soundtrack is available in Dolby Digital 5.1 or plain Dolby Surround. The 5.1 track is outstanding. The soundstage has active surrounds and many directional effects, creating an effective sense of space and auditory depth. The musical recordings (always important in a Cameron Crowe film) have great presence. Towards the end of the movie, the film weaves a complex layering of sound into an immersive aural montage that is just fantastic. It should be noted that the first few minutes of Cruise's voice-over narration are meant to sound muffled, as will be explained when he is seen later in the film wearing a mask. This should not be taken as a sound mix deficiency.

A French dub has also been provided in plain Dolby 2.0 surround. Optional English subtitles are available, along with true closed captioning.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

Vanilla Sky is one of those DVDs whose list of bonus features sounds impressive at first but does not amount to much of substance. Of primary importance is the screen- specific audio commentary by Cameron Crowe and his wife Nancy Wilson (yes, the soft-rocker from Heart), who was Music Composer for the film. The track also features a "conversation with Tom Cruise." Crowe does almost all of the talking, with Wilson in the background providing occasional support and some musical accompaniment. This is the first audio commentary I've ever heard with its own musical score, so that in itself must be pretty notable. Around the 1-hour mark Crowe makes a telephone call to Tom Cruise, who joins them on the track for approximately 10 minutes. Enjoyment of the commentary will be proportional to a viewer's interest in the movie. Crowe has done a few of these in the past and is an engaging speaker, but he seems to believe that he has made the most fascinating movie of all time and continually repeats how proud he is of this scene or that. He also makes the same mistake in the commentary that he makes in the film's narrative, hand-holding the listener through an explanation of absolutely everything in the movie, leaving nothing at all open to interpretation or ambiguity. Crowe refers to the movie as a "cover version" of the original Spanish film.

Two featurettes are of mild interest. Prelude to a Dream runs 6 minutes and seems to be designed as an introduction for the film, though I do not recommend watching it without having seen the movie first. The piece features some behind-the-scenes footage from the film's casting and pre-production, edited together into a rather self- indulgent montage. Hitting It Hard is another montage piece lasting 10 minutes. This one is about the movie's press tour with Crowe, Cruise, and Cruz. Mostly it's about swarms of raving fans fawning over Tom Cruise. Although perhaps interesting for a peek into the hectic life of an international superstar, it is not particularly enlightening (both of these featurettes have run in their entirety on "infotainment" programs like Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight, to give you a sense of their content). The best part concerns the movie's premiere in Spain, where local girl Penelope Cruz was already something of a big star yet is all but ignored by fans desperate to catch a glimpse of her American boyfriend. Both featurettes are presented in full-frame 1.33:1 video and stereo sound. Neither makes note of the fact that the two lead actors were having an affair during the movie's production.

In the menu section called "Music", we find a so-called Interview with Paul McCartney that is really a 1-minute publicity clip from Entertainment Tonight. Notably absent from the DVD is the music video for his Oscar-nominated title song, whose rights are no doubt tied up elsewhere. Instead we get the 4-minute "Afrika Shox" music video as a poor substitute. The song may work well enough within the context of the movie, but personally I find this sort of Techno music repetitive and boring.

The DVD also has eight photo galleries, containing a number of good production and publicity stills. In a nice touch, a 3-minute audio introduction from photographer Neal Preston can be selected to play over the menu. In this section of the disc we also get the disc's semi-hidden easter egg (it's really easy to find), revealing a 5-minute gag reel of bloopers, outtakes, and unused footage. This gag reel has also run previously on television to promote the movie.

Finishing off the supplements are an unreleased teaser and the international trailers for the film. No explanation is given for why the teaser was not released. Since it plays the movie's best scene (the Times Square sequence) almost in its entirety, I expect that Crowe decided to save it for the paying audiences.

DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the disc in your PC?

No ROM extras have been included.

Parting Thoughts