Rent Dream Scenario (2023)
3.2 of 5 from 250 ratings
1h 37min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Hapless family man Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) finds his life turned upside down when millions of strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams. But when his nighttime appearances take a nightmarish turn, Paul is forced to navigate his newfound stardom...
- Actors:
- Lily Bird, Nicolas Cage, Julianne Nicholson, Jessica Clement, Star Slade, David Klein, Kaleb Horn, Liz Adjei, Paula Boudreau, Marnie McPhail, Noah Lamanna, Tim Meadows, Dylan Baker, Maev Beaty, Marc Coppola, Krista Bridges, Conrad Coates, Marnie Brunton, Nneka Elliott, Jeremy Levick
- Directors:
- Kristoffer Borgli
- Producers:
- Ari Aster, Tyler Campellone, Jacob Jaffke, Lars Knudsen, Nicolas Cage
- Writers:
- Kristoffer Borgli
- Studio:
- Entertainment In Video
- Genres:
- Comedy, Horror
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 04/03/2024
- Run Time:
- 101 minutes
- Languages:
- English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
- Subtitles:
- English Hard of Hearing
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 1.85:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Trailer
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Reviews (6) of Dream Scenario
BRILLIANTLY Arch Satirical Canadian Film about Cancel Culture in a Dreamy Context - Dream Scenario review by PV
I had no idea what to expect of this. I am not a great fan of Nicholas Cage and hate some of the movies he is in. The CP review mentioned The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent - I see I gave that 2 stars and have no memory of the film at all.
This is BRILIANT - I love satire, especially arch and clever satire and this is brilliant as it depicts the cancelling of an everyman little man character through no fault of his own. It calls out cancel culture itself, the way the woke mob can single out a victim and ostracise them, ruin their lives.
here the setting is a magic realist postmodern tricksy one, of the Cage character randomly appearing in many people's dreams - NO reason for it. Not the usual world blackout or magic spell. It just happens. Now USUALLY I would hate that BUT because the script is so well-written and the characters and their reactions so believable, I could suspend disbelief about that magical mystical dream scenario.
I laughed out loud more than once and often had a wry smile on my face, as I nodded in recognition of the way in academia the herd mentality and hive mind of woke enables and empowers cancel culture, singles out a victim who is then targeted so all the attackers in the mob can feel better about themselves and landgrab the moral high ground. It is the WITCH HUNT of now. And it happens. A LOT. I have seen it with my own eyes.
This film wonderfully echoes that singling out of the victim in the fact the main character is an evolutionary biologist, educating students about zebras (stripes to heklp victims not to be singled out by predators) and ants (hive mind, or ANTELLIGENCE - his own theory). Plagiarism happens a LOT at universities too and in the media.
The marketing agency made me laugh too, like PERFECT CURVE in the TV comedy W1A. Just as odious and awful.
AND great, this is bang on 90 minutes - not overlong, no flab, well directed and edited. i could watch it again now/.
5 stars, with bells on!
3 out of 6 members found this review helpful.
Pretty good.. weird.. kinda pointless... - Dream Scenario review by TB
Quite interesting original concept - people keep seeing this man (the main character) in their dreams, and how that develops, but the developments are often without rhyme or reason, The film doesn't seem to really go anywhere with it, and doesn't really say anything either (or certainly nothing profound).
That's not to say it doesn't have it's moments - there's an interesting scene with one of the characters who has interacted with him in a dream in a way like none of the others, and then the attempt at reenactment is tantalizing and also very funny.
So as a whole, I don't think it really worked and I was left feeling "so what?".. but worth a watch...
1 out of 3 members found this review helpful.
Brilliant first half - Dream Scenario review by Alphaville
Dream Scenario is that rare beast – a visually interesting comedy... at least for half its length. It has a great surreal concept, a great look and startles from Frame 1, making it engrossing to watch as well as funny. But then it switches to less humorous satire, taking a welcome swipe at cancel cultuire but getting bogged down in uninteresting scenes. A boring meeting with social media nerds seems to go on forever. It gets bleaker as it progresses and eventually feels as though it has missed its targets, losing both its edge and its sense of humour.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Critic review
Dream Scenario review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso
If The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent was the standard meta-postmodernist picture of Nicolas Cage, Dream Scenario plays out like Charlie Kaufman's version of highlighting the actor’s surreal virality. For many years, Nic Cage has graced the internet as a slew of memes, ranging from jokes about his ridiculous hair in Knowing to his over-the-top performance in The Wicker Man remake. This film highlights that phenomenon and how it is beyond our control once our very identity becomes a viral sensation.
Cage plays the balding college professor Paul, a middle-aged guy struggling to achieve his decaying dreams. His book deal is going nowhere, and his class thinks little of him. Dreams seem to be The only interesting thing in his life. Not his dreams but the dreams of others. It starts with his daughter relaying a dream where an emotionless Paul watches his daughter float up into the sky in a surreal moment of horror. It’s a strange dream, but they don’t just run in the family. Several other people, including ex-girlfriends and students, start coming forward with dreams where Paul guest stars amid their deepest fears and attractions. Every dream is always the same. Paul is merely seen moseying around, sometimes in a state of disinterest. This wouldn’t seem unique in life, but the frequency of his appearance in dreams makes him a bizarre celebrity.
Paul attempts to take advantage of this newfound fame but doesn’t go how he wants. He meets with a marketing manager, Trent (Michael Cera), to help boost his chances of publishing his book, but all the young manager can think about is what products can be shoved into dreams. He later indulges in an affair with Trent’s assistant (Dylan Gelula), but it reaches an awkward conclusion. To complicate matters, Paul’s wife, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), is growing jealous of not being able to have these infamous dreams, further straining their marriage. It only gets worse when Paul’s dreams take a more terrifying twist when he appears to be killing the dreamers in their sleep (not in reality). Having gone from a friendly Freddy to a Freddy Krouger, Paul’s fame takes a nosedive, and he scrambles to salvage his lost 15 minutes of fame.
The weirdness of this premise mostly works for the first half of the film. Cage gives a great performance and is easily able to evoke the script’s dry humor from his casual dream cameos to his laughable moment of premature ejaculation. Only when the second half shifts into these uncontrollable dreams, which are a metaphor for cancel culture, does the narrative start to crack. While the idea of someone like Paul being reduced from getting a meeting with Obama to an interview with Joe Rogan, there is a level of uncontrollable chaos that doesn’t quite match the same downfall of figures like Jordan Peterson (which the film also mocks). Even less intriguing is the prospect of commodifying dreams that seem to come slamming out of the left field, wielding that capitalist satire with more of a wrecking ball than a hammer. By the end of the film, it feels like a messy mash of social media commentary by someone who doesn’t fully grasp how social media functions within our culture.
That said, Dream Scenario does have enough charm to make it mostly work. Cage never has a dull moment in this movie, and I’d be lying if I said some of these dreams didn’t make me laugh. As much as I didn’t like the film's second half, it did find a way to place some extra heart into the finale, as Paul reconnects with his wife in a dream that seems more genuine than a social media message. There are a lot of possibilities with a premise like Dream Scenario, and some of them are on the screen. The rest, however, is still stuck in the imagination of a script that needed a second draft to not seem like a makeshift Kaufman retread.