# What Dreams May Come (1998)

### reviewed by
Kleszczewski, Nicholas

    What Dreams May Come

Years ago, Robin Williams made _Jumanji_, a brilliant achievement in special effects, but a travesty on nearly every other level. The same can be said for _What Dreams May Come_, a boring, illogical, weepie-wannabe that left my senses numb.

Don't get me wrong: I love breathtaking special effects and pulse-pounding imagery. _Brazil_ is on my personal top ten. _The City of Lost Children_ is a great film because of its outlandish scenarios. I even love _2001_ and _Last Year at Marienbad_, being in the minority amidst my friends. _What Dreams May Come_, imagery aside, has little daring thought to complement its imagery. The daring thought it _does_ have is never fully realized. It's idea of a plot is so lukewarm, that it insults the bigger questions it raises.

It would have been better if the filmmakers rid the film of the live action sequences, put on an electronica soundtrack, and sell it as one of those popular _Mind's Eye_ videos.

Robin Williams plays Chris Nielsen, who dies too prematurely--not only in the story, but before we have a chance to really know and care for him. The director, Vincent Ward, and the screenwriter Ronald Bass, have chosen to tell his life story in flashbacks while having the foreground story focus on his experience with the afterlife.

Big mistake. It would have been far better to take the half-hour or so needed to tell his life story first (ala _It's a Wonderful Life_), so that I can build up respect for him, so I could know and possibly care for him, his children, and his long-suffering wife (played superbly by Annabella Sciorra). Instead, the filmmakers insult my intelligence by rushing into the story, expecting that the film to grow in depth as it progresses. It doesn't.

So in the afterlife, Chris learns that (a) people still don't meet God, (b) that our thoughts are reality, and (c) time does not exist there. Hmm... I+ll grant one of those silly giant ideas for the sake of the narrative. (The "not meeting God" part still irks at me, but perhaps there was no possible way to film it and give it due respect). That said, this alternate reality still makes no possible sense. Read on...

Chris' wife commits suicide. Since suicides go to hell, Chris would be separated from his wife forever. The important question is, is heaven really heaven if you are separated from the one you love? Good question.

And I like good thought-provoking questions. I don+t like it when the filmmakers deviate from the question. I _loathe_ it when the filmmakers deviate from the question so that the film becomes a popular rescue film, especially a rescue film which does not take its underlying premise seriously. I _really_ loathe it when it+s story is no longer run by logic, but by special effects.

Hey Chris: did you forget? Your thoughts are _real_. They are more _real_ than the physical world, according to the new-age screenplay. So, why don+t you conjure up positive thoughts of Annie, and let that run wild? And then she would appear before you, and you two would live in happy bliss for eternity?

Because there would be no movie, that+s why. And Albert the angel (played by miscast Cuba Gooding, Jr.) says bluntly: "That+s fantasy." Umm... if your thoughts are more real than the physical, then fantasy is not fantasy, but real. Surely some Eastern meditation specialist would be able to tell you that. And if you happen to think that you are an unimaginative person, and that your thoughts aren't big enough to sustain you for eternity, well, in all due respect, that's why I don't subscribe to this theology. All due respect.

Another idea, based on "Time, (pause), does not exist here!" So Chris, spend your eternity with Annie, as she is on earth, reliving your favorite memories, or hang out with her when she was growing up. You+ve got eternity: perhaps you can hang around long enough and learn not to freak her out. And forcing her to write "I still exist" in her diary, IMO, is just too tacky.

There are many other ideas, all of which are a hundred times better than what+s unraveled in the plot. The great aforementioned question is sidetracked into gimmicky subplots that have been done before, and just come out stale. Most insulting is the subplot where important people in Chris+ life appear in heaven differently than he expects, so when they finally show themselves, he realizes they were with him all along. And when this happens, the film runs in slow motion, as if to build emotion. _Gag me with a spoon_.

So the only things for me to like are Sciorra+s effective performance, who rises far above this mundane material, and the special effects. Please note that while I enjoyed some of the visuals, I did not enjoy _all_ of them: some of the images looked like Sandy Duncan universe, everybody floating up and down in invisible strings.

It sounds like a joke, but it+s really true: I really tried to block out the dialogue, and figure out what music would best work as an alternative soundtrack. My vote goes to a rare CD called "Never Say Die"(1981) from Petra, a Christian rock group. It+s pretty good, and they have a song about Annie, who commits suicide. (It+s too late for Annie/she+s gone away for good/there+s so much we'd have told her/and now we wish we could/but it+s too late...). Melancholic, yes. Depressing, yes. But far more entertaining...

So, in case you don+t know, let me be straight. Suicide--BAD. _DON+T DO IT_. No. No. No. (Got it?--you shouldn+t have to pay $7.50 to hear this in an awful Robin Williams schmaltzfest.)

    Nick Scale (1 to 10): 3

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