Where I Watched it: HBo MAX

English Audio Description?: no

This is sort of cheating. I’m catching up on reviews, and i watched this on HBo MAX on what was apparently its last day. i went to the ‘Last Chance” row and picked it from there. I wanted to see, would it have audio description? nope.

Eyes Wide shut is a weird one for me. Growing up, when i was a little kid, I didn’t watch R rated movies. But once I started into the double digits, certain ones started working their way in. Eventually, i basically never heard No, except when it came to this film. This was one my Mom was a hard No on.

Of course, it doesn’t have audio description, so i read about what i missed, and there’s a lot. It’s a visual film, because of course it is. It’s Stanley Kubrick. That’s why this thing needs audio description. There are also orgy type sequences that happen with no dialogue.

Yes, there is dialogue. And most of it comes from Tom Cruise, who has significantly more screentime than Nicole Kidman, despite the marketing suggesting otherwise. This is a serious role for Cruise, and he does a good job with it. It’s basically one night in this guys life, and he’s traversing New York looking for something a little adventurous.

Kubrick loves to play with his sound design and score. He loves his sound design almost as much as he loves the absence of it. I know there is existing audio description out there for this film, and likely I will revisit this film at some point with that. But it’s important to call out a service like HBo MAX, even when they seem to be doing a decent job with audio description. There should be someone whose job it is to track down and acquire all known pre-existing audio description. That alone would boost any streamers library. Instead, they are more than willing to allow their audio description offerings remain equal to that of a niche audience, like we’re anime fans or something.

I don’t know how much clearer I can be. Describe. Everything.

Final Grade: unwatchable