Kiss the Sky (1998)

Overrated and overhyped

Memorable, crazy movie

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

One of the surprises of "Kiss the Sky" is how it stays in the memory.Two men deep in midlife crisis leave their families behind and go for a holiday in the Philippines. After a drug and sex-fueled stopover in Manila, they continue on to a remote resort where they meet an Australian girl, becoming involved in a Ménage à trios – although threesome would be a more accurate description. In their search to recapture the experiences of their youth and find true meaning to their lives they abandon home, family and responsibility.William Peterson and Gary Cole play the two friends, Jeff and Marty. It is fascinating to see William Peterson in movies before he became Gil in "CSI". "Manhunter" comes to mind along with "To Live and Die in LA". His low-key approach allowed him to meld with those roles very effectively, and so he does here.Sheryl Lee plays Andy, the girl from the Australian countryside who is also travelling in a search for self. Sheryl Lee is brilliant. She does an almost perfect Aussie accent – nearly as good as Amy Walker's of "YouTube" fame. Apart from mastering the accent, she projects a sense of worldliness and vulnerability.Jeff and Marty encounter a funky Buddhist monk played by Terence Stamp who gives the guys almost the perfect excuse for what they are doing when he relates how Buddha, before he became 'The Buddha', abandoned his family and life as a prince to pursue his vision.Although things go fine for a while, the three-way setup starts to unravel. Jeff and Marty discover that there is no escape from the things that trouble them. Jeff's conscience cuts in and he realises the pain he has brought to his family. He returns to them but the ending leaves us wondering.Skirts, shirts, undies and sarongs hit the bedroom floor fairly regularly in "Kiss the Sky"; the movie contains a lot of nudity. Although it is fairly tastefully executed, it could help explain why the film is not more widely known. I think audiences are still uncomfortable with this much bare skin whether in a movie theatre or in a lounge chair at home. In one list of the 200 highest-grossing movies of all-time – most made since the end of the "Hollywood Motion Picture Production Code" in 1968 – there are perhaps three that have any nudity in them at all. Maybe profit is not a perfect measure of the artistic merit of a movie but I think it helps illustrate the point.Despite a fair amount of pop psychology and philosophy, it all sounds quite profound in the context of this film. However, "Kiss the Sky" also manages to pose some challenging questions.The soundtrack features songs by Leonard Cohen that connect so perfectly with the spirit of this movie that you'd be forgiven for thinking they were written especially for it. "Kiss the Sky" works well on so many levels; it is well worth the effort of seeking it out.

Dreadful script sinks a good cast. I'm sure the story is serious enough, and I regret that I couldn't hang in there long enough to see Terrence Stamp. And they call women whiny! I can see how Gary Cole got the part he had in "Office Space." He whines exceptionally well, which is all this script gives him to do until he falls down the recapturing-his-youth rabbit hole.Gary Cole plays a nearly suicidal attorney whose best friend, played by William Petersen, takes on as his rescue project, having been through his own nervous breakdown earlier. The first half hour does not reward with much but a headache. The script to that point apparently never met a class, age or ethnic stereotype it didn't want to exploit, employing only the choicest clichés available. It has no emotional depth, but if it was meant to be satirical, it also lacks the wit to pull that off.This is "Save the Tiger" as a buddy road flick. That movie gave me a headache too, but I was able to sit through it, because it had the one thing going for it this one didn't, at least in the first half hour, i.e. decent writing.There are so many other movies and plays that have handled this topic with better grace, even when showing middle-aged men behaving badly.If I can skip the first half hour, I may be persuaded to sit through it to catch Terrence Stamp's performance, but I'm afraid of what lurks behind that curtain.My one word review: Blecchh!

This is an antithesis to the chick flick. Two guys ditch the Real World and go on an international adventure in the Phillipines. The two main characters are lifelong best friends who leave their wives and kids for paradise in the tropics. We've all felt that desire to be free from our chains. However, each new attempt at paradise has its problems, women, natural disasters, longing for their families back home. No matter how close paradise looks on the horizon, you can't ever get to it.This is definitely a "thinker" movie and discusses the search for heaven on earth, or if there is ever such thing as complete contentment. We as humans, by nature, are always looking for the next best thing. As men, we want the perfect woman who understands and adores us, but even if we find her, we are always going to lose that luster and start wanting something else. Just when we think we know what we want, we find that we don't...Great film

Wrenching depiction of the male midlife crisis, in full bloom - completely acted out, with a kiss-off to the proverbial "American Dream." Well-cast with great scenery and direction, this film brings the audience into the internal struggle of two 40-something men trying to figure out what they and women really want out of life and relationships. With hopes and desires crumbling all around them, the American Dream not satisfying them, they accept the notion of process and continuous unsettlement, whether back with their families or off in a Buddhist monastery. The problem is not in what they have or do not have - it is with themselves. Very poignant angst captures the postmodern mindset.