Dream Lover Review

Ray is young, charming, successful and the owner of a prosperous architect company. However, he has recently gone trough a very painful divorce. But when he meets Lena his gloom is quickly forgotten.

by Jeremy Clarke |
Published on
Release Date:

01 Jan 1994

Running Time:

103 minutes

Certificate:

18

Original Title:

Dream Lover

High-flier Ray Reardon (Spader), seeking the perfect partner following an amicable divorce, runs into Lena Mathers (Amick) twice in as many days — at a party and then the local supermaket. Thereafter the pair go to a sushi restaurant for the evening and her bed for several days. Then they marry. And before you can say Mothercare, Ray has become a father who suspects his wife of harbouring dark secrets about a violent lover and a hidden past (on account of the bruises which regularly appear on her body and people who recognise her in the street as “Sissy something from Ohio” respectively).

Spader, it must be said, has done the yuppie-in-crisis bit once too often, while former Twin Peaks star Amick does little beyond evoke that show’s weirdness. Her presence coupled with a misguided attempt to inject some originality by writer-director Kazan suggests he fancies himself somewhat ill-advisedly as the next David Lynch since the proceedings are punctuated with excerpts from Ray’s dreams. These excursions into his head take place in a funfair at night, with a circus clown leading him to a tent labelled “Dreamgirls”. Inside, behind a curtain, stands his ideal woman.

This ill-advised attempt to pile on layers of meaningful imagery fails dismally through the lack of solid foundations on which to support it. Ray could either be a hapless innocent victim or man with a screw loose who deserves all he gets, but there’s no conceivable way could he be both. Calling this a thriller really isn’t on, since audiences are more likely to fall asleep in their chairs than hang on the edges of them.

Dull thriller which isn't very thrilling.
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