What Dreams May Come

Based on the novel by Richard Matheson, a book that feels like it metamorphasized through the cheap, color lusty technology of The Pagemaster, there should be no denying the book was absolutely destined to be something on film. With today's whirlwind of fantastic creative spectacle onscreen (some of which can seduce you into believing a film is better than it really is), this is a perfect time to let the world in on a few of the characters present in the severely cliched What Dreams May Come.

The film is a dreamscape of undeniable charm on several levels, with a warm and cotton close performance by the film's Oscar-winning lead (Robin Williams) as Chris Nielsen, a children's doctor who dies in a car crash and must plunge to the abyss of "don't do it!"-ville to save his wife from her plummet to Hell (the film is completely mystical, so get used to the supernatural references) after she succumbed to her suicidal mission. Nielsen and his wife Annie (played by Anabella Sciorra) were so happy together (conflict is completely erroneous between characters through the entire screenplay) that life would be indefensible any day apart. This may be "beautiful" to some but the melodrama is full of blood and being pumped through all the film's reels to the very end. We do, however, need films like this - we had superior films that were full of hoke in 1997 (check out the Oscar winner if you haven't seen it) but elegant and fortifiable. A presence of charming sentimentality is something most humans crave at some level, and What Dreams May Come gushes it across your face and makes you drink it. Nielsen's support of his wife, however, also helped her in past depressive abominations that nearly killed her.

Heaven is glorious in What Dreams May Come, and it follows the philosophy that many are familiar with. Bad go to hell, good go to heaven. We get to see both, and both are warded with fragments of hallucination and provocative signals of their being - heaven is a fantastic credit of all it has been concted to look like and hell is the same, except, of course, a spiteful and underscored place that wades through a line of dusk and creepy images.

What Dreams May Come is full of religious, but careful, propoganda - but never to serve the rights of biblical preaching, but instead a very big voyage for director Vincent Ward and screenwriter Ron Bass (who should have taken some of the glory dialect from the book and Copy - Pasted it to his script). It's spectacle, but that's its intention only. If you can handle the absolute sentimentality that never, ever ceases (some of the very few conflicts are so old-fashioned you would like to pelt Bass for believing everyone who will see this is a baby boomer), and some decent performances by Williams and Sciorra, and a film that if you let it is a seductress of intention, you will probably enjoy it. I personally enjoyed it for what it's worth, but I've seen Williams and he was better before - snag from your video store Hook.

Justin Cowan