Review of Dreamscape (1984) by Shawn W — 09 May 2015

Being a popular science fiction film featuring performances from both Dennis Quaid and Max Von Sydow, Dreamscape sounded like a fun adventure.

Dreamscape is clearly a dated film. This becomes clearly apparant in the opening dream sequence where a woman is sceen running in front of a clear green screen before the background changes and yet the colour scheme does not. The artificiality of this scene makes the low-budget nature of Dreamscape all the more apparent, and it proves itself repeatedly throughout the film. The visual effects are no longer surprising because it is easy to isolate the use of green screens in the film, although it is slightly admirably for its low-budget nostalgia nature. They have their moments, but most of the time they prove to be rather obvious by today's standards. But even then, Dreamscape is a film which is more focused on narrative than visual effects. And yet even there Dreamscape fails to make the same amazing impression. Dreamscape maintains a premise very similar to Christopher Nolan's inception, though it is explored in a much cheaper way which prevents it from being much of a spectacle. It has its visual appeal at times, but Dreamscape is far more focused on being a film about the story at the heart of the feature. In that sense there is a certain sense of admirability in Dreamscape, but as well as that the feature is a genuinely slow one which gives it a tendency to drag on a lot of the time. In a sense the film is cleverly written so that it is able to play with an interesting concept on a low budget without being overly reliant on visual effects, but as a result it takes the approach of using a lot of talking which really slows the experience down. And while the science fiction concept at the heart of the story is fairly interesting, the characters themsleves are not always precisely on par. The intentions behind the film are charming though, and for what it's worth I appreciate the intended efforts of director Joseph Ruben. But it just wasn't as fun as I expected.

Though Dreamscape is praised as being a film which combines in elements of science fiction, action and horror all into the one film, for me I felt that things were really scattered. The story itself did not feel consistent enough as there was constantly new themes being thrown in from all kinds of unpredictable angles. The concept itself is interesting, but it is all thrown into a slow moving feature which just fails to make the same impact today that it did upon its original release. The crossover of political themes and various characters against the backdrop of a science fiction film with deadpan comedy proved to just be sporadically entertaining at best. The dream sequences themselves were very creative which I hand high praise to, but it was the rest of the world around it that failed to make an entertaining impression. At heart, Dreamscape is just very much a B-movie which has fun when it sits back and embraces that notion. But it too often makes the mistake of getting caught up taking itself too seriously which is when the story is less than entertaining. And due to the low budget nature of Dreamscape, the visual style of it can be rather dull a lot of the time. Though the visual effects have their own cheesy appeal, the cinematography in the film always follows the most conventional of angles which are hardly atmospheric in any way and the general visual quality is a little bit rough or grim. This is particularly poor in some scenes which are shot with monochromatic backgrounds or nighttime settings. The one major techincal aspect of Dreamscape that is worth boasting about is the musical score. It is interesting to hear Maurice Jarre taking on a retro style 1980's musical score for Dreamscape because it is great in capturing the level of nostalgic and smooth atmosphere for the story, even getting rather intense during the more powerful scenes.

The cast of Dreamscape also supply their own charms to the film.

Dennis Quaid manages to stand consistently strong as the lead actor in Dreamscape. Dennis Quaid shows off that he has a Harrison Ford type charm in Dreamscape which works in the sense that it capitalizes on some of the Indiana Jones type moments in the film. He maintains a likable sense of sophisticated charm, and yet at the same time he has the bold and swift abilities of a smart action hero which means that he intergrates his physical capabilieis with his skill at creating an intelligent character. The balance is great, and he finds it without turning his character into an overly melodramatic one but rather keeping his balance on a steady level. Dennis Quaid leads Dreamscape with the right serious tone and plenty of charm.

Max Von Sydow is a charming presence as always. Dreamscape sees him returning to the science fiction genre and bringing his iconic sense of wisdom along with him, making him the ideal casting deicision for the role of the exposition within the story. His charming tone of voice and effective chemistry with Dennis Quaid see him put to good use in Dreamscape, even if he is limited by the one-dimensional simplicity of the role and the minimal screen time. Christopher Plummer manages to bring along the same kind of charm, although he achieves it through more antagonistic means. David Patrick Kelly is also welcome to see once again.

So Dreamscape benefits from Dennis Quaid's charisma and an original story with many creative dream sequences, making it all the more dissapointing that they are buried beneath a series of extended dialogue sequences which stretch the slow pace of the film on for too long while they cram in all kinds of unsuspecting and inconsistent themes which leave Dreamscape as a film which has aged strangely.