Rish's Reviews
Dreamcatcher the book was a mess. Dreamcatcher the movie is a bigger mess.
Let's see if I can somehow sum up this story for you . . . Four childhood friends are together in the Maine woods as adults, all with special powers they received when they were kids from their fifth friend Duddits, a mentally retarded boy. One of them was hit by a car and is recovering, one nearly committed suicide recently, one is a young-looking car salesman, and one is Jason Lee. An alien spaceship crashes and the area is cordoned off by a crazed military leader played by Morgan Freeman. A man with an alien parasite in him is discovered, and it bursts out of his rectum. There is a car accident. People are killed. The animals are afraid. One of the friends is possessed. Locked in his own head, he does battle with the alien possessor while the military attempts to wipe out the alien threat and the remaining friend attempts to save his possessed friend and the world from the aliens' plans. And other stuff happens.
As far as I know, this was Lawrence Kasdan's first foray into Sci-Fi or Horror. You could hardly call it a successful one, however. Parts of the movie made no sense. Parts just didn't work. Parts were confusing. Characters did the oddest things. The ending was stupid. It was not at all satisfying.
On the positive side, the film was certainly was ambitious. A couple of things they tried were quite brave. There's some good dialogue throughout. Jason Lee is funny in it. The cast all seemed capable, and it was interesting to cast Morgan Freeman in the character of Kurtz/Curtis. All I can say, however, is that you tend to remember his huge eyebrows rather than his performance.
There is a great moment where one of the characters has a telepathic phone conversation into a pistol, while the gun's owner watches with surprise. That made me laugh out loud. In fact, there were a couple of good laughs, quite a few nice lines, and a great visual or two. Wish I could say it was worth it.
Some scares and some effects did work, though. The shit weasels in particular were quite great. They were among the more disturbing, distasteful, and realistic movie monsters in recent years. In fact, I'll go as far as to say that nearly every single Horror moment in this film worked fine, it was the Dramatic, Science Fiction, and Suspense moments that failed. Largely, none of the flashback scenes work, and the entire narrative was so convoluted that I can't imagine a viewer who hadn't read the novel making heads or tails of what he was watching.
I don't really know what to say about the film. The critics hated it, and they were right to. In all the ways the book didn't work, the movie doesn't work, and manages to invent one or two new ways. I don't really understand how that can happen, when you've got the most celebrated screenwriter in the industry writing your picture, but hey, there's an old Spanish proverb that goes, "Aun Spielberg hizo Hook." Wise, those Latin folks.
I don't know, perhaps they were too reverential to the source material. After all, King is the Charles Dickens of our day, whether you like me saying this or not. And I've certainly complained when things were needlessly changed from his books (even when he made the changes himself). But those were usually good books, and this one was not.