From Paella to Pot Roast

With his rock background, writer-director Cameron Crowe is at ease with the notion of “Vanilla Sky” being “a cover version” of someone else’s tune, “a song,” as he puts it, “our band can play.” The key question, however, is not whether Crowe can play the song, but what purpose is served by his doing so, whether taking on this particular melody creates a mismatch between the sensibility he brings to all his material and his subject matter this time around.

“Vanilla Sky” is a close reworking of “Abre Los Ojos” (Open Your Eyes), a 1997 Spanish film that, though little-seen in this country, is a kind of classic of futuristic creepiness, an unnervingly spooky romantic drama that takes the notion of what is reality and what isn’t into new and startling directions. It starred Penelope Cruz and was directed by Alejandro Amenabar, whose feeling for this kind of material is visible in his hit English-language supernatural thriller “The Others.”Crowe, on the other hand, as the creator of “Almost Famous” and “Jerry Maguire,” is a filmmaker with a gift for intelligent humanism, for infusing his stories with realistic emotion and heart. He’s attempted that here as well, trying to add feeling and a more realistic sense of relationships to the scenario, taking a stab at making it his own.

But though “Vanilla Sky” is smoothly and professionally done, even audiences who haven’t seen the original will sense there is something off in the translation. Crowe’s version lacks the qualities that made “Abre Los Ojos” unforgettable and doesn’t add enough of its own to ensure success, even with the charismatic teaming of Tom Cruise with the returning Cruz, who in the interim has become an international star. Stretching too hard to fit this new kind of material has also thrown Crowe off his game in other areas. The casting of subsidiary roles (with the notable exception of Cameron Diaz) is not felicitous, and even Crowe’s usually impeccable ear for dialogue comes up with numerous clunkers.

As played by Cruise, David Aames is a guy who likes what he sees when he looks in the mirror, and why not. The handsome and confident inheritor of an international publishing empire, he’s the kind of spoiled rich kid who drives a black Porsche and invites the entire Olympic snowboarding team to his birthday party. He is, in his own words, “living the dream,” a dream that includes a casual sexual relationship with model-of-the-moment Julie Gianni (Diaz).

Everything changes when the tycoon’s best friend, Brian Shelby (Jason Lee), brings a girl he just met, Sofia Serrano (Cruz repeating her role from the Spanish film), to Aames’ birthday party. Even though their repartee is fake glib and feeble, the chemistry between these two is palpable, and Mr. Living the Dream senses he may be falling in love.

This is all straightforward enough, but it turns out to be the merest beginning of a plot (thought up by “Eyes” screenwriters Amenabar and Mateo Gil) that gets increasingly imaginative and complex. For one thing, this entire story, we learn early on, is a flashback, reluctantly recounted to a court-appointed psychiatrist (Kurt Russell) by an imprisoned Aames wearing a latex mask over a face he claims is disfigured. If he told the whole story, Aames says, “You’ll just think I’m crazy.”

While the core of the film’s narrative retains its interest, some parts have made the transition to Hollywood better than others. A subplot involving a company lawyer played by Timothy Spall seems meaningless, and the actor is not used to his best advantage. The same is true for Russell, Lee (who sounds irritatingly whiny) and even Cruz, who has never managed the naturalness of her Spanish roles in her English-language work. Only Diaz, compelling as the embodiment of crazed sensuality, comes out of this project better off than when she went in.

The story for Cruise, whose interest as a producer got the project made, is more complex. The choice of this role is an intelligent and risky one for him, both using and playing off his celebrated good looks. Finally, however, he does not seem to get as much out of the role as he might have: The easy parts are too easy, the difficult ones just a bit beyond his grasp.

The same might be said for writer-director Crowe, who doubtless enjoyed the change of pace as well as exercised his always excellent taste in music (R.E.M., Radiohead, Chemical Brothers and others) on the soundtrack. But he remains too warm a director to successfully master or even transform this deeply weird material. Though “Vanilla Sky” is probably the creepiest film Crowe will ever make, it’s hard not to feel watching it that there’s a creepier one fighting to get out that ought to be set free.

*

MPAA rating: R for sexuality and strong language. Times guidelines: sexual situations and dialogue and intense subject matter.

‘Vanilla Sky’

Tom Cruise...David Aames

Penelope Cruz...Sofia Serrano

Kurt Russell...Curtis McCabe

Jason Lee...Brian Shelby

Noah Taylor...Edmund Ventura

Cameron Diaz...Julie Gianni

A Cruise/Wagner-Vinyl Films production, released by Paramount Pictures. Director Cameron Crowe. Producers Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner, Cameron Crowe. Executive producers Jonathan Sanger, Danny Bramson. Screenplay Cameron Crowe, based on the film “Abre Los Ojos” written by Alejandro Amenabar and Mateo Gil. Cinematographer John Toll. Editor Joe Hutshing. Costumes Betsy Heimann. Music Nancy Wilson. Production design Catherine Hardwicke. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

In general release.