Betrailered Park, Part 2: Eyes Wide Not-So-Funny-on-Purpose

Stanley Kubrick made, what, a dozen movies? I love 2001. Love it. It's not a movie I can watch every day or anything, but I really love it.

Dr. Strangelove, I could watch probably once a week. The script, the direction, the Peter Sellers.

Hell, even Barry Lydon is beautiful to look at. And in 1999, twelve years after a theatrical release I wasn't old enough to watch, Stanley Kubrick had made a movie with two of the biggest stars in the world: Eyes Wide Shut.

I graduated that year and tried to watch as many movies as I could over the summer with my friends, most of whom also really like movies. And some of us were going to see Eyes Wide Shut.

I gotta admit, I was a little concerned going into the movie. The advance press had been all about the sexual and moral ambiguity of the story, and the leads and supporting cast would be nekked and doin' it. I'm not a prude, but I'm also not a fan of watching the guy from Losing Itfigure out if he wants to have sex with multiple chicks/dudes and cheat on his wife. And the trailers looked like it might be a taut, mysterious, maybe even sexy psychological thriller of... Kubrickian proportions. The trailer gave me enough faith that Kubrick would at least tell an interesting story, even if I did have to watch nekked people with chick friends.

Have you ever been kicked out of a movie? I haven't, but I think with Eyes Wide Shut I came close. The acting, the plot, the "sexy bits," were all hysterically funny. I mean laughable. Out loud. Really loud.

So that's what I did. I laughed through this new "masterpiece" from ol' Stanley. Because it was pretentious and unsexy. Because it was a little too much. Because it made Nicole Kidman unattractive. The filming lasted 400 days, and the movie had to last almost as long.

I get that the movie is a big Kubrick theme of "dehumanizing man." I get what he's saying about our world and menaingless sex and not treating people as objects and primal evil and Hal sings "Daisy." It doesn't mean I liked it.