“These days [Tom Cruise] is like a charlatan who can’t manage to dupe anybody. He seems desperate to maintain his stature as one of the world’s biggest movie stars, even as he morphs into something no movie star can afford to be: a guy you wouldn’t want to know,” writes N.Y. Times columnist Caryn James in today’s edition. “[Viacom chief Sumner] Redstone soon fell into the usual showbiz doublespeak when he said of Mr. Cruise, “As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal.” He got that backward, at least from the moviegoers’ perspective. Tom Cruise’s real problem is: We just don’t like him anymore.”
