Eyes Wide Shut

Never have I been to a movie with so many naked hot chicks and been so unable to get a boner. Stanley Kubrick didn't want me to get a boner, obviously, but why? Why dear God, why would anyone expose all these titties without trying to get me off? I do not know the answer, perhaps because I never read Freud. If any of you have and this boob thing is covered, please let me know.

I didn't know Stanley Kubrick the way every other fucking critic thinks he does. I do not call him Stanley, I do not talk about how I understood his previous movies. I'm not going to start now. He seems like he was pretty smart, but you know the way those eggheads are. Sometimes they don't understand matters of the heart like they do quantum fucking mechanics. Hell, I see more romantic drama around the air hose at the Ralston Amoco than a rich fuck like him sees in his mansion in a lifetime. So, consider it no surprise that the guy made a really creepy, elegant movie that just doesn't quite understand the way the men and ladies act.

Tom Cruise is a family doctor with a buttload of money (maybe packed up there by a gay man - I'm sure you've all heard the rumors). He and his wife, Nicole Kidman, flirt with other people. And when she reveals that she almost, nearly did the bone-dance with a Naval officer, Cruise is shocked. He didn't even imagine that his wife enjoyed salami-hopping. This sends Cruise on a spiral, trying to have his own anonymous fucking in retaliation and to calm his insecurities.

Cruise seeks out opportunities during a crawl through an empty and cold midnight Manhattan. He first fails to do the deed with a slutty hooker, and then he sneaks into a ritzy, private orgy at a mansion outside the city. He's caught as an intruder at this party and his life is threatened. That is, until a hooker who is part of the entertainment sacrifices herself so he may live. Pussy Cruise gets the hell out of there, but he's still curious and explores the seamy skin-crawling sex world of New York. Every time he gets close to a nasty fuckfest, he is stopped, first by the risk of social disease, then by the girl who died in his place at the orgy, and finally because his wife finds him out. Because of all this, Cruise repents and learns that fidelity to a loved one is not so bad after all.

First off, no shit. It's pretty obvious that fidelity is way less dangerous than screwing more chicks than I do light bulbs. But, most married people live with that knowledge every day. If the movie was about me and the Mrs. You could add getting the shit beat out of you by your spouse to the list of possible risks.

When I go to the movies I want to see hot people fucking like pistons into cylinders. As long as you got the boobs-aplenty on the screen, make them do a happy dance.

"Eyes Wide Shut" feels incredibly well-made. Like I said before, I didn't know this Kubrick guy personally and I didn't want to. But I get the feeling that this movie looks exactly the way he wanted it to. The scenes fit perfectly together, and they look beautiful. It's just too bad it's all undermined by Kubrick's poor choices and Cruise's absolute inability to act.

While the orgy is not nearly as arousing as it could be, it's almost perfectly creepy. It all just drips with an almost palpable evil and sense of death. During it, I sat there thinking, "Oh, fuck, this shit's going to come back to haunt me in nightmares." I wish they hadn't planted these sinister images into my medulla oblongata.

The orgy participants are masked and cloaked and they drift like monks through an ornate, hollow mansion. The ball-banging is all so formal that every hope for pleasure is drained from it. These people might as well be fixing leaky faucets. Actually, the scenes here are very different than my only orgy experience. Me and three friends once organized one with visions of stuffing the hottest chicks we ever knew. We made up fancy little invitations that included a note saying there would be free beer and we lied about how big our dicks were, and we got the house all ready with sheets and foam padding everywhere. So, when nobody showed up, we felt incredibly stupid and unattractive and we kept our clothes on. Maybe we should have had masks.

Tom Cruise sucks horse ass. His acting abilities are way overmatched by the subtlety of the shifts in his character. The poor chump can't even understand the context enough to put together a complete performance. See, the guy's character starts in one emotional place and is supposed to end in another through what he has seen and encountered. But Cruise doesn't give us shit to believe in. He just sort of overacts his way through each scene without providing a continuity, and it ends up disjointed and unbelievable.

The character he plays is unsympathetic, and who better to play an unsympathetic character than Cruise? Because, nobody but "People" magazine-reading teenaged girls like the big-haired dwarf. He is a self-centered doctor who can't handle his insecurity. He wants to fuck almost anything that moves and is female thinking that will make him feel better about himself. In the end he doesn't fuck anyone. Why? Not because of his moral fiber, but because he could have gotten AIDS, could have gotten killed, and is found out by his wife. Sorry, a guy that can only redeem himself by being scared shitless ain't getting my vote for man of the year.

Kidman is better. She at least understands that this should not be acted like an action movie. Her role is brief, but her character is one of the most complete broad I've seen on screen. She can be a faithful housewife while still acknowledging that she likes to be wanted. She is flattered by a fucking Hungarian's come-ons, but she's also smart enough not to fall for him. She knows more about what Cruise is going through than she lets on, and you can see it in her performance.

Kubrick made his movie very formal, like a rented prom tuxedo. I swear to God that not a single character uses contractions when speaking, and they speak slowly and actorly. I'm not smart enough to understand why Kubrick did this, but it surely dehumanizes the story. And, if it's a movie about fidelity and loving a wife, you damn well better keep it as human as you can. The result of all the formality is that sometimes the movie feels more like the signing on the Declaration of Independence than a journey in to the uncharted psychological territory of people who want to be loved. Kubrick, if you can hear me from the afterlife, these characters are not HAL, they are people. Don't make them act so stagey and unreal.

Like I said before, "Eyes Wide Shut" is less arousing than even the very worst of amateur porn. What's weird is it's not supposed to be, and yet Kubrick only shows naked women. Hell, I'm not complaining, I just think it's odd. Why show only beautiful naked women if the point is not to titillate at least a bit? I mean, if you're going to show sex or people in unsexy nudity, show them both. I don't give a fuck. Maybe Kubrick was a dirty old man and he dug having all the naked chicks on the set.

Actually, teenaged boys may get their rocks off watching "Eyes Wide Shut." But, that's only because they have the ability to disembody titties from unappealing surroundings and focus all of their energy on just them. It could be footage of open heart surgery, but if a teen boy sees a naked boob he is going to forget everything else.

So, Kubrick gets three posthumous fingers. Go if you want something to think about for a few hours. But, stay home and watch the "Great Bikini Off-Road Challenge" if you're just looking for nudity.