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| The enticing, icy-cold poster for Lawrence Kasdan's Dreamcatcher |
QUICK REVIEW:
Four childhood friends, who share a mysterious experience with a retarded boy called Duddits, are now on their way up to share a weekend together in a cabin, when a series of scary events occur.
Dreamcatcher, written by William Goldman (Chaplin (1992)) and writer-director Lawrence Kasdan (Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015), writer), is an adaptation of Stephen King's (Dolores Claiborne (1992)) same-titled 2001 novel. It begins pretty well, and it brings together a good quartet of actors: Jason Lee (Growing Up Smith (2015)), Thomas Jane (The Mist (2007)), Timothy Olyphant (Justified (2010-15)) and Damian Lewis (An Unfinished Life (2005)).
Dreamcatcher goes on to develop in surprisingly, extremely gross ways, (SPOILER the toilet scene is, admittedly, a bull's eye horror-wise.) But apart from each other, the four characters are annoying, SPOILER and they then die, - but then live on ... And then Morgan Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption (1994)) shows up, acting well, but depicting an army leader, SPOILER who bombs aliens and whose function for the original story is unclear.
What King possibly (possibly not?) makes work in the novel certainly doesn't in this overly cryptic, overlong film. Dreamcatcher does, however, have outstanding special effects.
Related review:
Lawrence Kasdan: Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) - Abrams scores big time, makes beautiful space opera blockbuster (writer)
2003 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2003 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Cost: 68 mil. $
Box office: 75.7 mil. $
= Big flop
[Dreamcatcher was released March 21 and runs 133 minutes. Filming took place around Prince George, British Columbia. It opened #2, behind Bringing Down the House, to a 15 mil. $ opening weekend in North America, where it grossed 33.7 mil. $ (44.5 % of the total gross). Its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Japan with 5.5 mil. $ (7.3 %) and Spain with 5.1 mil. $ (6.7 %). Kasdan, who has earned a renaissance with Star Wars VII, related in a 2012 interview that the poor performance of Dreamcatcher hurt his career and held him from getting work for years. He finally returned with Darling Companion (2012), a romcom about a woman who loves her dog more than her husband, who then loses the dog, which he wrote, produced and directed. Dreamcatcher is rotten at 30 % with a 4.7 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Dreamcatcher?
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