“Dream Scenario” Review: Promise Of The Premise

Nicholas Cage stars in a film that buckles under its own lofty dreams.

A24 maintains its reputation as the arthouse, quirky production company with their latest comedy, Dream Scenario. Starting a celebrity with a similar reputation, Nicholas Cage plays an old doormat of a professor, Paul Matthews, one with a searing jealousy of and contempt for the world around him. Failing to be published is the result of a failure to even try, but to Paul, it's actually the inevitable result of his consistent status as life’s soul victim. Behind his nasally stammers and empty breaths of a laugh is a desire to be known and inability to see beyond himself. Only Cage could pull off such an eccentric, unsettling performance with this level of uncanny effectiveness. However, once Paul is finally recognized for his strange and sudden appearance into everyone’s dreams, he relishes in the fame he’s always craved. Paul takes on interviews, more and more citizens float in visualized dreams with Paul as the sole suspect, and the star of the hundreds of thousands of nightly shows goes on an adventure he never knew he never wanted. This arch sounds somewhat generic, but with a premise so imaginative, how could it ever be a bore? Well, just as Paul’s ambitions terrify him into passivity, Dream Scenario crumbles under the weight of its own creative excitement and desperation to prove itself nuanced, leading to a lightly comical, repetitive film that never fully reaches its potential, despite valid attempts at doing so. Dream Scenario is thus the fabled “promise of the premise” executed at its least satisfying.

The film begins with an efficient set up. Within fifteen minutes, audiences are introduced to Paul and his daily routine that would send anyone into internal spirals of discontent. The writing is arguably at its strongest in these opening minutes, save for one scene where a surprise appearance by one Mr. Michael Cera shocked me as much as the scene’s quality. Notably, the film's strongest writing bouts come only when it allows itself the grace to slow down. Ironic, as a character has never been as passive and trotting as Paul, demonstrated through intricate details and narrative nuances in the stellar opening scenes. Paul isn’t just a teacher who maybe makes less than he dreamed, but a man whose family forgets about him, who took his wife’s last name, whose life’s work was stolen and published, and who literally teaches lessons about camouflage. Paul is the hidden Zebra he lectures on and on about, except his invisibility is anything but purposeful or desired.

Which is why the numb professor fully embraces the fame this sudden, unexplained phenomenon brings. If you were hoping for an explanation, I’ll save you the trouble, there is none. While I didn’t enter the film thinking about how and why Paul appears in everyone’s dreams, or even desiring an explanation, by the time the film nears its end I couldn’t help but feel unsatisfied by how abruptly it concludes, realizing that much of the film seems to have skipped over itself. Dream Scenario is structured in narrative sprints of extreme optimism and dreadful consequences for Paul. Entire sequences feel connected not by narrative, but by Cage simply being present in the scene, making for montages of Paul’s life instead of a logical narrative progression that shows Paul taking action in this new life. Yes, Paul is passive, that’s his weakness, but that doesn’t have to mean it must be the film’s as well.

There is thus a jarring shift every twenty or so minutes in narrative consequence for Paul that invites repetition. Structurally, Dream Scenario is fantastic at painting a portrait of an interesting character via an interesting premise, but fails to ever iterate on its initial ideas or deviate from its narrative patterns to make for a truly exciting watch one would expect from the synopsis. With this rushed pace comes the numerous consequences of a story chasing its own tail: side characters are reduced to plot devices, story details are forgotten, and contrivances stack on top of each other all the way to the film’s anti-climactic ending, where the potential for interesting thematic development is cut off by the film’s end.

That does not mean Dream Scenario always fails to impress. Certainly, there are moments where the languages of cinema are utilized to properly execute this exciting idea. Creative cinematography and expressive editing make for some fantastic examples of visual storytelling, matching the eccentric and dynamic tone the film maintains alongside attempts at nuanced thematic development. However, style is not equivalent to substance, and nothing proves this more than Dream Scenario’s forced messaging. The commodification of one’s dreams is another layer applied to the established and tired message of “fame has its consequences,” but is then reduced to nothing more than cheap references to vague representations of social media personalities and cancel culture. Meaty humor and ideas are replaced by jokes that follow the train of thought that is “recognition = humor.” It wasn’t until the forced exploration of an idea the film doesn’t give itself time for that I realized I actually hadn’t laughed much at all. Not to say the dialogue is poorly written, far from it. Tiny nuances and subtle jokes abound, clever setups and payoffs are realized, and there are moments of seismic tonal shifts that somehow manage to evoke the proper emotions every time. As previously mentioned, Dream Scenario does deliver on some of its promises, just never the most important ones.