Vanilla Sky

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * )

The question isn't what is Tom Cruise doing in a remake of Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar's Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes)?

It is after all a high-falutin' psychodrama, though we all know that its real-life ending is the most conventional of them all: he gets the girl - Penelope Cruz, who played the same role in the original.

No, the question is what is Cameron Crowe doing helping Cruise to make such a bad movie and an incongruous one at that, given the director's own talents?

Did Crowe feel the need to make a break from giving us finely observed characters in movies that say something about life, such as his last Cruise collaboration Jerry Maguire and this year's rock'n'roll memoir Almost Famous?

Because he certainly has. Vanilla Sky tries to say something about conscience, memory, dreams and what happens when a man who relies on his charm and good looks loses both.

But with Cruise unable to make his largely unlikeable character the least bit interesting, and its hall-of-mirrors plot going way into overtime, it just doesn't gel.

Instead, it becomes yet another example of what happens when idiosyncratic Euro-flick becomes grand Hollywood star vehicle.

It groans under the combined weight of the big star's baggage and the director's efforts to stamp some trademark on it - in Crowe's case that includes a soundtrack that sounds like his CD player is stuck on a very random shuffle, as well as various pop culture references. (Hint: look for the scene that looks just like a famous Bob Dylan album cover. Wow cool ... er, so what?)

There's another perplexing question at the centre of this too: Why would Cruise's man-who-has-everything Manhattan magazine magnate opt for the demure, bird-like Cruz over Cameron Diaz - a vivacious if slightly unhinged regular bed pal?

Cruz is cute - and there is discernible chemistry between her and her leading man - but Diaz is the best thing in the movie.

Jilting Diaz is where the trouble starts. Cruise ends up horribly disfigured and apparently in prison for a murder we can only guess the detail of, and spending his time talking to Kurt Russell's psychiatrist.

After that, we start getting into giving-the-game away territory. But frankly, it's not much of a game. Especially with its giant left-turn of an ending, which might have worked in the original but just blinds us with science - or perhaps it's scientology in disguise.

That Vanilla Sky doesn't make sense isn't the problem. It's that it doesn't make sense while being dull and pretentious with it.

Cast: Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz

Director: Cameron Crowe

Rating: M (offensive language, violence)

Running time: 136 mins

Screening: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas