Movie Review: Eyes Wide Shut

Story: Successful Central Park West, huge apartment dweller, Dr. Bill Harford (although he seems to have very few patients) suddenly discovers his wife, the lovely Mrs. Harford (unemployed art gallery employee and mother of their 7 year old daughter) has eyes for and fantasizes about other men. This news sends the good doctor's ordered life into a tailspin for the next 48 hours. By merely thinking about sex outside marriage he immediately gets sucked into the New York (although the obvious fake sets of NY city streets really bothered me) night filled with dark, edgy, scary, erotic characters more out of a nightmare than real life. The movie rambles on with tangential hard to believe characters, stories, dialogue that takes forever for the characters to interact (people just do not talk to each other the way they do in this film) and a sound track that asserts itself way too much into the 'story'. The moral of the story? Stay home, order in!

Acting: Tom Cruise is better in action/running/sweating Mission Impossible type films. He reminded me too much of his character Joel, in Risky Business (which is still a great film). He is not a good actor, but he is good to look at. Nicole Kidman should be doing underwear commercials. She is not in the film much. I have mixed feelings about her from film to film. Her accent here was very annoying. Most everyone else were more like automatons.

Sappy Factor: None

Note: I am adding two new categories to my reviews as of today. Both of them have been lingering in my mind and a friend suggested I include them, so here goes:

Pets: None (many movies cry out for a pet). The Harfords should have had a cat. Cats would well in this story. They are sort of mysterious, no?

Visual Art: I always notice what is on the walls of the characters homes in the movies. This film slapped you in the face with all of the art. I liked the art. It worked well in the film. It turns out that Kubrick's wife and another painter's work was used in the film. Long live nepotism!

LOBO HOWLS: 6 (also it was 25 minutes over the 2-hour Lobo rule)

Another Note: I wanted very much to like this last film of Kubricks. I salute his career but think he has spent the last 20 years in too much seclusion for this film to be relevant to our society today.