Sadly Over-hyped

Dreadfully Boring

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Dennis Quaid plays Alex Gardner, a young man with psychic abilities who is on the run from gangsters who want him to work for them.(He can pick the winners from horse races). Alex is saved by the timely intervention by his former teacher(Max Von Sydow) who wants his help with the secret government project he had once been involved with, in order to help both a young boy traumatized by nightmares, and also the U.S. president(played by Eddie Albert) who is having horrible nightmares about WWIII, and so wants a treaty with the Russians, which forces in the government(led by Christopher Plummer) want to prevent...Exciting and highly entertaining film is well acted by its stars, and has imaginative and scary visuals(including the Snake man) that work quite well. Villains may be one-dimensional, but film still works, and has a good score and satisfying ending.

There's a fair amount of 80s style imagination and panache to be found in this nifty combination of sci-fi, thriller, and political intrigue. It's got a hell of a good cast and a more than capable director, Joseph Ruben, who'd started out in exploitation films and later turned out the solid sleeper "The Stepfather" as well as mainstream fare such as "Sleeping with the Enemy". Its premise may be too close to "A Nightmare on Elm Street" in some ways, but at least the political element helps it to stand apart.Dennis Quaid, at the peak of his charisma, plays Alex Gardner, a psychically gifted young man who would rather use his gifts for self- gain but reluctantly agrees to help old pal Paul Novotny (ever delightful Max von Sydow) who's developed a revolutionary dream therapy program. It seems that now people like Alex can be inserted into the nightmares of others, and help them to deal with them. However, there's a smooth but cold government man (a chilling Christopher Plummer) who has sinister motives for supporting this program.Wonderful visual design is just one of the hooks of this story; the nightmares each get their own "dream tunnel", for one thing, and for another, the bleak post-apocalyptic landscape of which the President (Eddie Albert) dreams and the skewed images experienced by young Buddy (Cory "Bumper" Yothers) are very well realized. The special effects are eye popping, and things do get pretty grim and gory (a heart is ripped out of a chest). One of the highlights of the movie is the nefarious Snakeman, a monster brought to life through a combination of stop motion and an actor (Larry Cedar) in a costume. The music is cheesy electronic stuff, which is kind of surprising considering that the composer is the great Maurice Jarre. There's some witty dialogue, and a steamy subplot involving Alex and the young Dr. Jane DeVries (Kate Capshaw, who's lovely but sporting some real 80s hair here).The cast couldn't be better; also appearing are the eternally amusing David Patrick Kelly as weaselly little psychopath Tommy Ray, George Wendt as a horror novelist who snoops around, and character actors such as Redmond Gleeson, Peter Jason, Chris Mulkey, Madison Mason, and Brian Libby. Also, Ruben keeps the pacing consistent and the big showdown between Alex and Tommy Ray is a set piece worth waiting for.With all of this going for it, "Dreamscape" is a totally engrossing diversion that may be very much of its time but still does a good job of entertaining the viewer.Eight out of 10.

The whole concept of this movie was pretty interesting. The ability to go into someones dream and help them face their nightmares. But the only people who can do it are psychics. At first you are hook to a machine, but if you are strong enough, you can do it without the machine. The cast was pretty good. Dennis Quaid did a decent job. I guess you could say he had an enemy and it was David Patrick Kelly. He was pretty good too. More creepy than anything. The one thing this film lacked was story. It jumped around way too much. Plus it rushed a lot. The whole time you want to see Dennis Quaid in a dream, but when he finally gets into one, the scene doesn't last that long. That is the whole point to the movie; the dreams. The last dream he enters is longer, but still rushed. Maybe they were just afraid to extend the movie, I am not sure. But if done right, it could of been fantastic.

A sci-fi thriller that is a major forbearer of Christopher Nolan's Inception. It also deals with people who can enter the dreams of other people. Dennis Quaid is a man with psychic abilities. Max von Sydow is a scientist who studied Quaid when he was in college. Now he recruits Quaid to work with him in his dream studies. Kate Capshaw plays von Sydow's sexy assistant (and, no, she's actually pretty tolerable, despite having annoyed us all as Indiana Jones' love interest the same year). Christopher Plummer plays a government agent who wants to use these dream experiments to help the President (Eddie Albert) overcome his nightmare problems, and David Patrick Kelly (the guy who spoke the infamous line "Warriors, come out to play-ay!") is another psychic working on the project. There really aren't many sequences that take place in the dreams, but the few that do are pretty excellent. Most of the film has Quaid discovering the devious reasons Plummer has in bringing the President into these experiments. Not a great film, by any means, but an entertaining one.