User Reviews

The script was written by someone on opium, how else to explain the psychobabble about relationship between men and women.

I know of many stressed-out white men with a family, young children and a nice house, who remember nostalgically a carefree trip while they were young and single. A good number even take a trip with their buddies and without their wives to briefly re-live the single life while in their 40's male midlife crisis.

But to leave all that behind for a brief Menage-a-Trois with a promiscuos young blonde on a distant Philippine island?

Then there is a bamboo Tower of Babel built to "kiss the sky" complete with a monk and language barriers...a metaphor for what, exactly. After the tower collapses in a heavy rainfall the monk doles out some Buddhist wisdom about "finding paradise only in your heart." Ouch.

This is a movie for men whose physical passion has left their marriage as they reach middle age and lose the energy to cavort from sunup to sundown chasing women while drinking and taking drugs. But they can dream, can't they?

Most movies have a "turning point" in the third act to resolve the problem laid out in the first and second act. Here Jeff inexplicably jumps into bed with a photographer on the very night he returns to vainly rekindle the Menage-a-Trois. Is he just plain stupid, given the blonde rents a room nearby in the same hotel? The writer must have overdosed on opium at that point.

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 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

It was a very compelling story of 2 friends trying to figure out life. There was some great scenes of romance, heartbreak, and self determination. They do dabble into drugs, both prescription and not. At the end there is a surprise were Jeff ends up.(with his wife) Gary Cole's character ends up traveling to a Buddist monastery and runs into Andy (Sheryle Lee). Jeff does not know whether or not he wishes he was there, but knows he should be with his wife and kids. William Petersen made this movie great, that was the only

reason I rented it in the first place. Sheryle Lee does a great job,

as well as Gary Cole. I think some people will relate to this movie more than others. Sometimes I feel as if I am struggling to find my self as well, so I enjoyed this very much.