Review: Dream Lover

Kristy McNichol stars as a NY jazz flautist, newly moved into the area with boyfriend Justin Deas. One night she is attacked in her apartment and nearly raped, before she fatally stabs the intruder. Unfortunately, the nightmare has only begun for her- she’s literally having nightmares about the incident. It doesn’t help that Deas cheats on her, and there’s something not quite right with her relationship with dad Paul Shenar, either (Kissing on the lips for one thing). Along comes Ben Masters, a handsome dream analysis researcher who wants McNichol to be a part of his experiments. And hey, if it cures her of her problems, that’s a bonus. Unfortunately, it looks as though it’ll only make things worse. John McMartin and Gayle Hunnicutt play family friends (who are only in the film to cast aspersions on Mr. Shenar for possible red herring purposes).

 

Not the crowning achievement in the career of director Alan J. Pakula (“Klute”, “All the President’s Men”, “Sophie’s Choice”), this 1986 psycho-drama/quasi-horror film is pretty poorly done. Star Kristy McNichol is usually a charismatic presence on screen, but she seems completely uninterested in being here, and given the subpar Brian De Palma-esque nature of the material, I don’t really blame her. Scripted by Jon Boorstin (who worked for Pakula in various technical capacities over the years, but has become mostly a TV writer since the 90s), the film’s idea of reading a person’s dreams on a graph is absurd. How can you tell what exactly she was dreaming about just by looking at a graph? You can’t get specific info like that from a simple graph. “Spellbound” this ain’t, it’s more like the dated “Brainstorm” and “Dreamscape”, but much worse (Apparently there was a ‘technical consultant’ involved, but my guess is their expertise was in hydroponics, not dream analysis). Then again, this is a film that shows McNichol, already miscast as a jazz flautist, getting a record deal in 1986 playing the flute and attempting to scat. Um…no, sweetie. Just no.

 

The wonderfully surreal, dream-like cinematography by ace Sven Nykvist (“Persona”, “Cries and Whispers”, “Chaplin”, “Sleepless in Seattle”) is a major asset, but despite not being easy to predict the ending, the film is still bloody awful. It’s shockingly edited (including some appallingly amateurish night/day/night gaffes), confusingly plotted, drab, and ultimately pointless. McNichol looks sensational in teeny weeny cotton panties, though. That’s an important detail.

 

I’m really not sure what Pakula saw in this material, and you’d have to be a die-hard McNichol fan to get much out of this misfire which eschews chills and horrors for wannabe-Bergman dry pretentiousness and goober jazz flute lameness.

 

Rating: D+