This movie is a good half hour too long because Crowe spends all his time farting around, trying to impress himself by confusing the crap out of everybody else. The main character, a rich magazine publisher named David Aames (Tom Cruise) is having trouble distinguishing between his dreams and reality after a car accident leaves his face horribly scarred and an obsessive girlfriend, Julie (Cameron Diaz), dead. Julie causes said crash because she's just a tad bit jealous that David lusts after Sofia (Penelope Cruz), who's introduced to David by his best friend, Brian (Jason Lee).

David is telling the story of the crash to Dr. McCabe (Kurt Russell) because he's in jail for a murder. After a while, we wonder whether the crash actually happened, whether David's face is actually disfigured, and whether Cruise's divorce from Nicole Kidman has somehow turned him into Al Jolson. Seriously, "overacting" isn't quite dramatic enough a word for what Cruise does on screen.

What Crowe doesn't seem to understand is that his movie is not terribly clever and even less important. It's just a small, schlocky science fiction gimmick that certainly doesn't merit an audience's rapt attention for two hours and fifteen minutes while Crowe fills out a soundtrack album and works out a few of the things he didn't understand in "Metaphysics 101."