Eyes Wide Shut

Eyes Wide Shut is painfully slow, badly acted and immature. That's a real shame given that it was directed by the same master film maker who presented Dr Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange; movies that would have to rate highly in a list of the most innovative and thought provoking.

And what of the merchandising? Eyes Wide Shut is yet another recent example of the hard sell of a very soft product, along with Star Bores and Independence Day. It's a movie sold by subterfuge, a lousy film well promoted.

Here's the process. The film was made and viewed by the producers. They knew it was a turkey, but knowing that sex sells, billed it as soft (perhaps even hard core) porn starring the saleable Tom and Nicole, and then an added bonus occurred. Kubrick died!

The promoters worked the campaign using a few seconds of nude action from the stars, drawing patrons to the cinema with the same techniques used by the rough spruikers employed by Kings Cross strip joints; the same rude ruses used to drag drunk, shallow brained punters off the street to see naked women and "live" sex.

I'm no wowser. Real live sex is great, especially at home, and even at the cinema. I don't mind sex at the cinema as it's not too distracting, but Eyes Wide Shut attempts to elevate sex, even an orgy, into some sort of stylistic art form.

The sex act, even at its most enjoyable, is also pretty ridiculous. In real life it might be fun but it's hardly dignified. At it's best it's an expression of love or at least a hell of a giggle. As Woody Allen has said "Sex is dirty. But only if you do it right."

But if ever there was evidence that our culture, and in this case Hollywood, sometimes takes itself far too seriously then consider Eyes Wide Shut.

The big thing in Eyes Wide Shut is supposed to be the orgy but what's this? An orgy I would imagine would most likely be accompanied by a lot of alcohol, plenty of laughs and with a bit of luck a good deal of sweat.

I especially think it would be unlikely that an orgy would be as depicted in Eyes Wide Shut; as a stately jerk from jerks wearing high heels, masks and bored facial expressions.

The so called sex in Kubrick's film is sensationalist Hollywood sex; immature, schoolboy, back of the shelter shed stuff. I would have hoped this sex wouldn't have had a hope in a hell of a brothel of selling a ticket at the cinema. Alas we're not that smart.

Schoolboy? Yes, and as we would expect, very misogynist and homophobic. There's no male nudity but one badly taken accusation of homosexuality against the Tom Cruise character Bill. All of the naked women are skinny and young. Throw in a camp hotel clerk who's played for laughs and we have a very biased world indeed.

Most of the above would have been fine though if the film had been at all entertaining. There have after all been plenty of worthy films that have been over promoted, homophobic and sexist, but Eyes Wide Shut is so slow and awkward it's plain boring.

It's based on a 1926 Viennese novel unsuccessfully reset to modern New York. Dr Bill Harford and his wife Alice (Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman) go to a rich man's (Sydney Pollack's) party where they are both flirtatious.

Later Alice tells Bill that she has fantasies about having sex with someone else. This upsets Bill and he, perhaps for revenge, delves into the seamy, sexy side of New York.

Bill meets and old friend Nick (Todd Field) who tells him about these strange orgies and Bill goes to one of them.

Apparently it's dangerous for Bill to be at the orgy although it's never really explained why. Bill later tells Alice, with a ludicrous result. End of film (thank God!!)

I often think that bad psycho dramas like this could have worked if they were turned into comedies, but in this case I think that Kubrick would have also have had to have got rid of Tom Cruise. Cruise is way out of his depth here and about as entertaining as a used condom.

But maybe Kubrick was the real problem because just about everything about Eyes Wide Shut stinks, except the sets which are pleasant.

Remember the time travel sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Well Eyes Wide Shut is almost as bad as 2 hours and 40 minutes of that.

And I really am sick of seeing women peeing on toilets in movies. We used to see them in the shower in films. Now it's on the throne. Yuk!!