Main cast: Morgan Freeman (Col Abraham Curtis), Damian Lewis (Prof Gary ‘Jonesy’ Jones), Thomas Jane (Dr Henry Devlin), Jason Lee (Joe ‘Beaver’ Clarendon), and Timothy Olyphant (Pete Moore)
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Bear with me as you imagine me walking up to Lawrence Kasdan and William Goldman – Mr Goldman cowrote the script – and smack them in the face and yell at them, “What the hell are you two thinking?” If those two guys want money so bad, why not just go do some insider trading at Wall Street or something instead?
This movie starts out a movie about four buddies – Gary “Jonesy” Jones the most annoying and imbecilic one – naturally he doesn’t die – Dr Henry Devlin the macho one who naturally leaves one of them to die, Pete Moore – cute and funny so he dies – and Joe ‘Beaver’ Claredone, funny and obsessive compulsive so he dies too. As kids, they saved an emaciated loser kid from a bunch of jocks in an awkward and very stilted confrontation that convinces me that those jocks must be robots from outer space. I think. I didn’t read the Stephen King book of same name from which this movie is based on. These four friends are then bestowed gifts that allow them to have psychic powers. Not that these people actually do anything with these powers. Pete can’t even get a date.
They all go to a cabin where they encounter aliens that infect people, gestate, and then burst out of these hosts’ bodies via the anus. Then there are big aliens with teeth. There are also brown aliens that look like the Thing after massive liposuction and a face lift. Then there is a subplot about Col Abraham Curtis who wants to kill people and aliens. Jonesy gets infected but he doesn’t die when other infected people do. He says the kid they saved warned him, but what is that about, I have no idea. What are the aliens doing here? I have no idea. How many alien factions are there? Two, I think, maybe three. I don’t know. There are many huge gaps in this story’s plot and narration that requires the viewer to read the Stephen King book to fill them. What good is a movie if it requires me to read the book to get the whole picture?
Apart for a few gory scenes of bloody backsides – really – there is really nothing going on in this movie. Just long, boring scenes filled with interminable self-important silences and pauses of contemplation, a grandiose pretension surely. To top it off, Jonesy, the main guy, is irritatingly inept. Damian Lewis’s idea of speaking (badly) in a camp Joker-style manner suggests that he would be a better birthday party clown than an actor. Thomas Jane has no expression at all. His Henry Devlin, the designated macho man of the four, behaves as if his friends’ deaths are of no more significance than his breaking a fingernail.
Dreamcatcher is so horrifically inept that it is a complete waste of time and money. Timothy Olyphant is hot though. Anyone notices just how much he resembles Billy Zane at times?
