Director: Kristoffer Borgli | Writer: Kristoffer Borgli
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Nicholson, Jessica Clement, Lily Bird
Dream Scenario is a nod to Being John Malkovich, with a new-era Nicolas Cage twist, that will delight audiences with its bizarre heart and confuse them with its wacky story. I happen to hate Cage, will never forgive him for his past cinematic indiscretions, and refuse to allow him to rebrand himself as an experiment. To me, he will always be a terrible actor who makes terrible choices. That he’s willing to try movies like this at this point in his second career is admirable, but that doesn’t make him likeable, not in my book. Still, Dream Scenario works on a lot of levels, while showcasing glaring holes on others.
Paul is perhaps the most boring man on the planet. He’s an evolutionary biologist and a professor, but he’s stuck in a mundane existence, can’t stand up for himself, and it really wouldn’t matter if he disappeared tomorrow. What’s weird is that, as uninteresting as he is, people around him begin to see him in their dreams, always doing nothing at all, just appearing there for no reason whatsoever. As the phenomenon grows, Paul enters the whole world’s dreams, and those dreams become nightmares, leading to a souring of the 15 minutes of fame that he never asked for in the first place.
On the surface, there’s a little sci-fi story here that’s pretty interesting. Underneath, and taking away every scene about dreams, we’re left with a tale of relationships, of loss, of attempting to find yourself and not knowing where to look. It’s very sad, really, the collapse of a marriage and of a family, set against the backdrop of fantasy. That’s what I liked very much about this film, that and the clever, awkward humor toward the beginning. What I didn’t like was an ending that stretched on too far, almost as if the main idea was only 75 minutes long but they figured they’d better extend it to 100 for basically no reason at all. Also, I still just don’t think Cage was the actor for this role, despite how desperately he wants to be the weird old guy that weird little movies like this turn to. He simply isn’t talented enough, and this director simply wasn’t ready for this deep a project, not quite yet. Dream Scenario would be a better short film, and its message would be that much louder.
My rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆