"If your story wanders around and you're totally emotionally removed from what's occuring, then it's gonna be boring, it's gonna be uninteresting, and it's gonna suck"

Assassination of Jesse James, There Will Be Blood, your beloved The Savages, hell, even No Country for Old Men could be described like that to a certain extent. The issue isn't the story; it's the characters.

The foundation of "Eyes Wide Shut" was the characters. The main conflict was an internal struggle and it was basically a character piece with a loose mystery built-in. Once people didn't care about the main character, thus not caring for his struggle/conflict, the focus moved to the mystery which supposed to bear the weight of the film. Add in the very slow pacing and you have a film that is going to miss the mark with most of the audience.

Personally, I thought "Eyes Wide Shut" was an intriguing failure but to say the problem is just the story seems wrong. I think you could remake the film using almost the exact same story and come away with a quality film. (Ditto for AI)