2023's Tom Cruise: The Last Movie Star is not so much a documentary as it is an A&E Biography special sort of lapsing into syndication. I mean I'm not saying that's a bad thing but why announce it as an actual release when it could easily qualify as boob tube filler via 6 PM on a Tuesday.
With "The Last Movie Star", you have a timeline of Cruise's permanence of a career, the highs and the mid-lows all sort of pasted together and on the fly. I mean why is he so able to easily play Ethan Hunt over the span of nearly thirty years? And why would he fire his manager who just happens to be his own sister by blood? And uh, what's up with his fascination with Scientology and his yearn to plunge into the almighty meltdown (Oprah's couch ring a bell?)?
Yeah Tommy boy is a pretty interesting guy, and Tom Cruise: The Last Movie Star is pretty juicy stuff. The production values, well they ain't much and the propped up interviews, well they're from people I've never heard of (except for critic Richard Roeper, but no captions regardless). The particulars regarding Cruise's metier journey however, are raw and honest. And the archives of him in Top Gun, Days of Thunder, and/or Risky Business mode, are evocative and longing for the past of glorious 80s/90s pop cinema.
Tom Cruise: The Last Movie Star, well it puts "the cruiser" in equal parts negative and positive lighting. And while we see him show up periodically in the flick, he's mysteriously not there in probing to defend himself via his own delineation. Oh well. At 75 breezy minutes, "The Last Movie Star" is worth at least one watch if you're a Cruise fanboy or someone who didn't know every tidbit about his meteoric rise in the meaty cesspool of "Hollyweird". Operatic "star".
Written by Jesse Burleson
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