Dreamscape

Dreamscape follows psychic Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid) as he reluctantly agrees to participate in a program designed to help people suffering from nightmares, as the clairvoyants use their abilities to actually enter the subjects’ dreams and assist from within the subconscious – with problems ensuing after a shady government official (Christopher Plummer’s Bob Blair) decides to use the technology for nefarious purposes. It’s a decidedly out-there premise that is, at the outset, employed to distressingly uneven effect by Joseph Ruben, as the filmmaker, working from a screenplay written with David Loughery and Chuck Russell, delivers a watchable yet hopelessly erratic episodic first half revolving mostly around Alex’s dream-based exploits – with the hit-and-miss nature of these interludes certainly contributing heavily to the movie’s less-than-consistent atmosphere. (It seems apparent, ultimately, that one or two of Alex’s dream-infiltrating escapades could and should have been jettisoned.) There’s little doubt, then, that Dreamscape improves immeasurably once Quaid’s plucky character stumbles upon Blair’s villainous scheme, after which point the picture adopts a far more propulsive feel that’s heightened by an ongoing inclusion of compelling sequences – with the climactic stretch, detailing a dream-set battle between Alex and David Patrick Kelly’s evil psychic, certainly ensuring that the movie concludes on a fairly ludicrous yet undeniably entertaining note.

*** out of ****