Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Nicolas Cage now has over 110 acting credits to his name, which is an average of over 2.5 roles each year since his career started in 1981. I only mention this because it is now well documented that Cage loves to work as an actor so much that he is hardly discerning as to which parts he’ll take. This means he’s in a lot of very bad movies. It also means that, when some of his parts end up actually being really good, it’s the career equivalent of a broken clock being right twice a day.

A recent example: Pig (2021), which impressed me a great deal more than I expected—both the film overall but especially Nicolas Cage’s performance. Even now I would call it his best starring role in at least twenty years—and I said as much in 2021.

In the meantime, in between many other roles that hold no interest, Cage has started taking roles that make it seem like maybe he’s in on the joke, but with spotty results: last year’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, in which Cage played himself, fell far short of meeting its vast potential; and earlier this year Renfield, a comedy in which Cage played Dracula, legitimately disappointed.

So this is the strange expectation any new Nicolas Cage film has come to: the man actually does have massive talent, but he also has a deeply unreliable track record of having it effectively harnessed. Enter Dream Scenario, a slightly surreal blurring of the line between reality and dreaming, which, as presented by writer-director Kristoffer Borgli, might be called “Charlie Kaufman-esque.” Honestly I’d have been far more interested in what Charlie Kaufman might have done with this premise, in which, inexplicably, one very average middle-aged man suddently starts appearing in the dreams of people around the world.

Dream Scenario is getting very good reviews, and I get it, I suppose. But here’s my issue with it: Nicolas Cage’s college professor, Paul Matthews, is not just a totally average, balding Boomer. He’s also a guy who makes consistently bad decisions, and is a straight up annoying guy. This isn’t a peformance decision, either: Paul is written this way, and it’s very much a part of the point of the story. From where I was sitting, though, spending a very well-edited 100 minutes with him was more than enough.

What’s odd is that I still can’t say I din’t like the movie. It’s a competently constructed, subtly provocative exercise. There’s a compelling notion in Paul’s benign behavior in nearly every dream—his total lack of inaction becoming a sticking point for the Paul who lives in reality—shifting in response to a particular instance of aberrant, furtive behavior. When a young woman asks Paul to re-enact her unusual dream in which they have passionate sex, things go wrong, but in a predictably pathetic way. Paul doesn’t actually harm the woman, but something about how wrong the entire scenario is shifts the tone of everyone’s dreams, and suddenly Dream Paul is brutally attacking everyone.

Dream Scenario then touches on things like “cancel culture,” but without ever having anything substantive to say about it. It is an interesting question, whether someone in reality has any obligation to apologize for their behavior in anyone else’s dreams (it also has an easy answer: they don’t—but when this applies to a mass audience, that answer gets complicated). Surely many viewers of this film will deeply relate, after a dream colors their perception of someone, however unfairly.

Dream Scenario is surprisingly grounded, for a film in which so much of the story takes place in dreams. And making dreams legitimately interesting is tricky business, not often pulled off well. The concept of infiltrating other people’s dreams has been done before, of course—Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film Inception might be the best example—but to Kristoffer Borgli’s credit, Dream Scenario gives it a new twist. I just wish that twist had turned in a less cringey character. You could make the argument that cringe is the point here, but I would argue that this premise could be explored just as well, if not better, without it.

*I guess I don’t regret spending a hundred minutes with this loser, but I can’t very enthusiastically recommend it.*

Overall: B