This weekend was supposed to be spent camping under the stars. This weekend was supposed to be me, your humble weekend adventurer, fulfilling a lifelong dream of hiking, with power bars in fist and gatorade in pack, over many grueling miles to the center of the High Peaks region of the Adirondack wilderness, the highest point in New York state, Mount Marcy.
Mount Marcy, just under a mile above sea level. Mount Marcy, where it's possible to have snow any month out of the year. Marcy, the mountain the Indians of the area called Tahawus, which translated means "cloudsplitter". Marcy, the big one. The biggest one. Huge.
Marcy has eluded me for years, but the time was right. The dog was kenneled for the weekend. The delicate daffodils that I tend in my garden (I am referring to the whiny people in my building at work) knew that I would not be around, and not to bother looking for me, and that I would, in fact, be making the New York State journey equivalent of Brad Pitt in "Seven Years in Tibet". I had reservations. I had fought off a last minute cold with amazing success. I had it all, baby, and Marcy waited for me to step foot on it's rocky slopes.
And then it rained like all holy hell.
I'm talking serious rain. The kind of rain that would have made Gene Kelly drop his umbrella, crap himself, and run away making noises like a little girl. Big rain. Scary rain. Huge rain.
And so, my big adventure of the weekend was making a taco salad and eating it in sweat pants while I watched "Vanilla Sky". My weekend was a SURGE commercial in the making.
So was VANILLA SKY good enough to make me forget that Marcy had eluded me like the last Pringle in the bottom of the can once again?
Actually, it was a decent flick.
Cool, trippy endings are all the rage now, thanks to M. Night Shamalamawhatever. He was a pioneer. I'm sure when he presented his ending for "The Sixth Sense" to the producers he was met with unyielding opposition. After all, Hollywood had been making horrible and predictable endings for years, and people had eaten it up! But these days, everyone is on the bandwagon, even Cameron Crowe, who previously let us into his past with the autobiographical "Almost Famous", and showed us what a lucky duck he is.
But anyway, Vanilla Sky.
Vanilla Sky goes something like this: Tom Cruise is an Ice Cream tycoon who experiments with gamma rays and goes stark raving Honey-Nut-Clusters on us, and eventually snaps, going on a killing rampage dressed as a soft serve machine, slaying anyone who ever dared order Vanilla instead of one of his goofy-named, candy filled specialty flavors like "Grandma's Crunchy Bunions" and "Technicolor Yawn". Meanwhile, a radioactive spider bites..............
No seriously, Vanilla Sky is about Tom Cruise living the Tom Cruise lifestyle. He's got sparkling good looks, money falling out his wrinkled porthole, owns a powerful company, and he sleeps with Cameron Diaz whenever he feels like it. He comes in late to work, when he comes in at all, and people line up to press their puckered lips to his million dollar posterior. He's even got holographic musicians playing at his birthday party. I can only imagine how Tom Cruise had to push himself to pull off such a fictitious character. Anyway, he pushes his luck, and decides that Cameron Diaz isn't NEARLY beautiful and sexy enough for him, and decides that he will have Penelope Cruz instead. This of course makes Cameron Diaz as mad (angry mad, that is) as a wet hen, and somewhat mad (crazy mad, that is) to boot. She ends up going slightly Honey-Nut-Clusters, does a really poor imitation of Evel Kenievel with her car, and shatters Tom's arm, along with his nose, his jawbone, and most of the rest of his face.
While the premise sounds straight forward at this point, like an episode of "the Bold and The Beautiful", things start to get weird...... really weird. The audience wonders what the hell is going on. The audience decides Penelope Cruz is much hotter than Cameron Diaz. The audience wonders what is real, and what is merely a dream. The audience decides that Cameron Diaz is much hotter than Penelope Cruz. The audience thinks it's got things figured out. The audience discovers it's actually just stupid and confused, and decides to just shut it's collective pie hole and see what happens next. The audience decides it doesn't matter who is hotter, but hopes to see Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz get in a pillow fight.
And so, we watch as the ashes of Cruise's once perfect life start to twist and grow into some kind of nightmare. Along the way Jason Lee and Kurt Russell show up, and the Jeckle and Hyde story of living with a horribly disfigured face swings from hopeful to hopeless, and everywhere in between. It's a kind of "Sixth Sense" meets "American Beauty" meets "The Matrix"........ or NOT.
And so we watch, and we wonder, and we hope a groovy ending will tie it all together.
The ending of the movie explains it all, and while some people, you know, the kind of people whose powers of imagination and speculation peak at "Wouldn't it be GREAT if Wal-Mart doubled coupons?" will undoubtedly think the ending is just too cerebral, turn to their spouses and say "I told you we should have rented that new Adam Sandler movie where he is the wisecracking slacker who gets thrust suddenly into unusual circumstances", some of us will get it. While not as jaw-dropping as other movie-ending classics like "The Sixth Sense", "The Others", or "Caddyshack 2", the ending will make you want to go back and watch it all again, even if we do know, sadly, that Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz never get in any pillow fights.
Vanilla Sky is a very stylishly filmed and creatively directed film, and Cameron Crowe does an amazing job. The music is catchy and fitting, and even throws in a few clues here and there as to what the sam scratch is going on. If you think Tom Cruise is a dreamy slab of man-flesh, you'll like this film, as the camera follows him everywhere. If you are not a big Cruise fan, not to worry, as about half the film he wear a rubber Michael Myers Halloween mask and feels sorry for himself. Which is a good thing, as it allows us to concentrate on Penelope Cruz.
Wait a second..... Tom CRUISE, and Penelope CRUZ!? CAMERON Diaz and CAMERON Crowe!?
I think I missed something obvious. Maybe I need to go back and watch it again and see if I missed something. Maybe I didn't get it after all. Sometimes people miss the obvious. And if you thought I was serious about "Caddyshack 2", you might be one of them.
And I suppose I'll have to wait to climb Mount Marcy, to stand upon that rocky summit and gaze off into the endless, limitless, Vanilla Sky.
As always, the balcony is condemned.
Dr. Torgo