30 Second Bottom Line: A Twilight Zone tale of a wealthy stud muffin, heir to a publishing throne, whose mind constantly trips between dreams and reality. With both parents deceased and no strong personal commitments David Aames smugly skates through his relationships. Almost asking for it with his nonchalant attitude, he becomes the target of a scorned lover’s revenge. Now mentally and physically challenged, he pursues true love with another woman and struggles to keep reality and dreams separate.

Story Line: David Ames (Tom Cruise) is a guy who has it all¾ good looks, tons of money, lots of energy. The movie opens with his alarm clock announcing in a woman’s voice with a foreign (Penelope Cruz) accent to "Open your eyes." He rouses himself from the bed, gathers his gym clothes and heads out the door only to find, in what is a truly fantastic visual, a New York City completely devoid of people. David drives through Times Square, lit up even in the early morning like a pastiche of neon, and is panicked by its vacuous feel. He then hears an American woman’s voice telling him to "Open your eyes" and is in bed with his casual girlfriend, Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz). His motions are identical to before but this time it is real and not a dream. From the beginning the confusion of dream and reality permeates this movie.

David has inherited a publishing empire from his icon of a father. His father’s book barely mentions his only son, and David seems as vacant¾ without a strong relationship to anyone¾ as Times Square is in his dream. There are people all around David; his sex-buddy Julie Gianni, the board members of his company, who dislike him immensely, and his hanger-on friends. But who is he really without attachments? He lives an idyllic life, but is it real?

At his birthday bash in his magnificent, spacious loft-like apartment, his one close friend Brian Shelby (Jason Lee) brings a date, Sofia Serrano (Penelope Cruz), who immediately captures his heart. Julie doesn’t miss the immediate chemistry between the two and her stalking, jealous nature begins to appear. David ends up spending the night talking with and dazzled by Sofia in her humble little apartment, and leaves in the morning only to find Julie in her car at the curb just outside Sophia’s. This is never a good sign for a guy, and against his better judgment, David gets into the car with her.

She tells him that Brian, his best friend, claims David refers to her as his "f--- buddy." She’s in love with him and is emotionally destroyed by his actions and horrified by this moniker. As her rage builds, her driving speed increases. David tries to control the car, but she drives off an overpass into a stone wall below, killing herself and almost killing David. He’s in a coma for weeks, and finally awakens to great pain, a horribly disfigured face and is barely able to walk. He is incapacitated for months before he can venture out to locate Sofia. When he does he is so conflicted with physical and mental agony it is impossible for her to be with him. He sleeps on the street outside her apartment where she ultimately takes him in like a stray dog.

The blending of reality and dreams flows so heavily through this part of the movie that it becomes difficult to know where the story goes. We begin to flash into scenes in a prison where David is held for murder, where he is involved in a series of interviews with a shrink, McCabe (Kurt Russell). McCabe tries to decipher the truth about this murder. We do too, and in the meantime, David wears a mask to cover his disfigurement that actually has been completely repaired (unless that is also just a dream).

In the background of many scenes there is a TV broadcasting a program about a dog that had been accidentally frozen in a lake for three months and brought back to life. The TV spokesperson tells of such a technique called cryogenics that can do the same with people. David, we discover, has been frozen and brought back to life. His romance with Sofia may all have been a dream of what he wishes he could have.

Tell Me More About It: It’s challenging to write a synopsis of this movie because it’s all over the map. Cameron Crowe is a wonderful director but seems to have made visual candy that misses its psychological mark. He does convey the internal conflicts that haunt David’s slick life, but it’s not clear what if anything David is trying to achieve or what he learns from his experiences. The fact that his relationship with Sofia could be all a dream leaves us confused and unfulfilled. Is true love only a dream? Does David create the entire relationship with Sofia in his mind? These wouldn’t be bad or weak premises for a movie, it’s just that there is not a message really getting conveyed here. And why the cryogenics? There are so many story elements already do we really need a gizmo to make it that much more interesting or confusing?

I have no complaints about the acting. Cameron Diaz is great as a sweet yet desperate casual lover. Penelope Cruz is so visually pleasing, delicate and lovely. Her achievement is more visual than psychological though. Kurt Russell is intense, but the psychiatric scenes are weak in that they don’t lead us to a real insight. Tom Cruise is a pro, and handles all of his scenes well.

The film is visually pleasing, not an unpleasant or boring two plus hours, but it leaves us flat without having given us a direction or destination.

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