Kiss the Sky (1998)

A Brilliant Conflict

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

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.

This film is one of my favorites about men. So many films in Hollywood today bash men or make us look like fools. Others get preachy toward men. This film portays two men going through a mid life crisis, and does so without becoming preachy or portraying the men as fools or evil. Absolutely fantastic.Also, this film is a wonderful unconventional romance. The two men both fall for the same woman, but rather than making this a problem, they choose to make it a threesome. Sheryl Lee is absolutely smoking hot in this role, and makes the film a sensual masterpiece.The dialogue at certain points is a bit trite or cliche, but the dialog in other parts more than makes up for it. The seduction conversation between Sheryl Lee and William Petersen has some of the best dialogue I've ever heard. The conversations between Petersen and Cole cut the core of a man's heart and gut, and deliver difficult truths around men's experience of modern life.Every man should see this movie, but maybe he should watch it alone or with the guys, lest he cheer at the wrong moment while watching with his wife/girlfriend.

This film's underlying idea is about two middle-aged friends who find themselves in male menopause at the same time, and decide the thing to do is to change their lives completely. An interesting idea, but one that has been the basis of plenty of films. The thing is that they decide to do this by building themselves a large structure in the Philippines, where they can escape the outside world by means of sharing the attentions of one woman they both find attractive (of course, they swear they won't be jealous of each other, they are all just so damn spiritual), as well as the company of a dubious Zen Buddhist monk, played by Terence Stamp, who should have known better.Had the makers of this film treated their antics in a humorous way, this might have been an enjoyable romantic comedy. Instead, they treat the whole matter with ponderous earnestness, with the three main characters sprouting clichés of trivial spiritual `wisdom' right and left; one is taken aback by the possibility that the script writers actually took all this rubbish seriously. So, what could have been a pleasant film ends up as a ponderous, crashing bore.

It is no secret that many forty-something men are dissatisfied with their lives. And it is no big new plot story for them to run off from their married lives to pursue some new life of enlightenment and adventure. For those reviewers that panned this movie, that's all they got out of it. And if that's all there were to this movie, they'd be right to pan it.Jeff and Marty are very close to each other. It would be impossible for either one of them to act without the other, at least when they start out. They have such a bond that when the much younger love interest shows up, they find a way to share her. The three way sex scenes are tastefully done, and Andy (the delicious Sheryl Lee) is clearly seduced by the idea of having two men in a sense of fun.But they aren't the same guy. This movie is all about how they play off each other. The self-assured Jeff shows just the right amount of vulnerability, and the diffident Marty shows the right amount of insight. These two guys are different parts of a conflicted soul, too complex for a friendly Dutch monk (Terence Stamp) to guide.A movie for adults.