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PHOTO COURTESY OF WARNER BROS.
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Four childhood friends with strange powers bond together to fight against an ominous force that threatens to destroy them in "Dreamcatcher."
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By Lindsay Utz
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Thursday March 27, 2003
Everyone has a sinister side. There's a safe psycho within us all. Horrifying events and disturbing contemplation can safely unfold within the confines of the mind, without judgment or punishment from the outside world.
But of course there is always someone who crosses the mind's line, takes it too far and actually gives life to the sick thoughts that should have never left the realm of human imagination in the first place. While sometimes good imagination leads to good art, sometimes good imagination takes a turn for the worst in the real world.
Stephen King's novels may be bibles for the bloody prom girl inside us all, but some of his stories should remain just that: stories. Written stories save room for imagination, bad movies based on good stories just ruin everything.
Many of King's stories have been successfully adapted to screen; many have not. But by far the leading failure of a King-to-screen endeavor is this latest installment, "Dreamcatcher," a story meant for a sharp imagination, too bizarre and fantastic that only a movie equally as deranged would suffice.
Okay, here's the 30-second synopsis. The movie begins (unfortunately). We're introduced to four generic characters, men who were childhood buddies and who share the gift of reading minds ÷ a talent given to them by a sweet retarded child they saved from the high school bully. Really.
The man-buddies, upholding their yearly tradition, go to this cabin in the woods. It's snowy, cold, they drink beer, look up at a dreamcatcher dangling from the ceiling, reminisce, look up at the dreamcatcher again and laugh some more.
While out hunting one day, they find a man, frost-bitten and staggering through the woods. The man looks sick, has bad gas and there's something moving inside his belly ÷ mind you, some pretty gross sounds coming from it too.
Unfortunately, the film's downhill from here. Once Jason Lee's character, who is the only remotely funny person in the film, is attacked by the lubricated alien-eel creature, there's nothing left to look forward to. Trust me, I waited around, sat through each long boring scene thereafter and started to feel bad about my trivial life. I thought movies were about escaping your trivial life, not reminding you of it.
Morgan Freeman, in a bad career move, plays the disillusioned agent who is trying to put an end to all this epidemic madness. Some of the sentimental cop wisdom he imparts goes like this: "These are Americans. The idea of slaughtering Americans · just turns my stomach." Profound silence. Boom. Thrash. Strike the orchestra. Typical.
It's a wonder where things went wrong. The screenplay is written by William Goldman, the same man who wrote "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and who adapted one of King's earlier novels "Misery," both solid, successful movies.
"Dreamcatcher," on the other hand, is a disappointingly dull and stale visualization of a story that, if anywhere near as brilliant as King's 1978 "The Stand," must be a decent novel. "Dreamcatcher" the movie is a disappointment, dealing with King's wild imaginings in shallow Hollywood manner instead of giving it the pure extraterrestrial insanity it deserves.
At a moment that's supposed to be the tense climax of the film, one of the disease-fighting officers looks out into the snowy wilderness and with deep conviction says, "Some kind of shit's gonna hit the planetary fan."
I hope Goldman was laughing when he wrote this, because he couldn't have been serious.
