Review of The Dream Team (1989) by Brian L — 25 Mar 2011

I love this movie and I have to take issue with the critics that have confused The Dream Team with a parody of mental illness. It's a comedy that centers on four escaped mental patients in New York City, but not one that dehumanizes people with these illnesses.

Though the portrayals of the different mental disorders aren't particularly accurate, psychological/psychiatric understanding of these disorders wasn't very accurate compared to what we know today (more than 20 years after the film was released).

And I have to admit that my main reason for loving this film is personal. My father had schizophrenia and his residence at a mental hospital was a source of great disappointment for me and great unfairness to his faithful and loving wife, my mother. When we first saw this movie together, I was in the middle of adolescence and was every bit a pain in the ass as one son could be to his mother. When mom rented this film after hearing about it from a co-worker, I remember thinking it was going to be terrible. However, this cheesy, out-of-date, 80s comedy united us somehow. We laughed throughout the whole movie and when it was over, mom told me a couple of stories of what dad had been like before the schizophrenia set in (I was 7 when he checked into a mental institution permanently so I didn't really know him when he was well). This film enabled us to laugh at things we were both very sensitive about and, by doing so, opened up a parent-child dialogue that was in serious need of maintenance.

In short, I can say without a doubt that if you are sensitive to exploitation of the mentally ill, you should not be offended by this film. You still might be offended depending on how your own sensibilities work, but I wouldn't take the critics' word. My guess is that the people who have called this film insensitive were just looking for a reason to bash it. For those of us with loved ones who suffer from mental disorders so burdening that they require institutionalization, it's incredibly refreshing to see at least one film about about mental patients that doesn't try to win an Oscar. The Dream Team simply treats these people like normal run-of-the-mill and lovable characters.