Dreamcatcher - 3/22/03

Written by: William Goldman and Lawrence Kasdan (Based on Stephen King novel)

Starring: Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Damian Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Timothy Olyphant, Donnie Wahlberg

Official Site

Making a movie out of a Stephen King book has become a sure bet in Hollywood. His name is too recognizable to lose... pretty much.

There have been some great movies based on his novels. The Shining, The Dead Zone, Carrie, Christine, Misery and, of course, The Shawshank Redemption.

There are more... and I'm sure each person has an opinion on the subject. Hell, there's usually something about a Stephen King movie that people will find enjoyable, or at least humorous for its camp humor and inside jokes.

Prior to the movie coming out, I bought the novel Dreamcatcher. I'm a fan of SK's work... I've pretty much read all of his novels and, well, I was looking for something new to read.

Dreamcatcher is 896 pages. The movie is 136 minutes. One thing I will say is that it didn't feel like two hours and change... it went by pretty quickly... the pacing isn't terrible, but the Dreamcatcher book is such an involved story... well, I'll just say this. What they did to that book was a mess.

Adaptations can be two things. Easy or hard. You can say that about anything, really... but in this world of adaptation, you either get good material that is easy to adapt, you get crap material that translates into a crap movie or you get a huge novel that is too big for a movie, and adapts into only a small portion of what the writer was trying to accomplish. The latter is the problem with Dreamcatcher, the movie.

Ok, I'm going to get this out into the open now, to lay the cards on the table, so to speak.

The oldtimers of Hollywood have to stop writing movies. They have no idea what makes a good story anymore, but are hired for their name and what it represents in the past.

William Goldman is such a writer. I'm sorry, I know that running a website for screenwriters, that might border on sacrilege, and I might lose readers, but I think it's the truth, so I'm writing it here. That's not to say I have no respect for him as a person, or him as the writer of such great works as Marathon Man, The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy or All the Presidents Men... tons of great work... but somewhere, it all fell apart.

I'm going to give you a perfect example of a great story that adapted well. Goldman has adapted two other King works and his most successful attempt was Misery. The reason was because the novel was simple and precise. It centered around two people, with some additional side characters thrown in... but with two characters, and the events that take place between them... your character development, etc... all of them get stronger. You have the time to invest in them.

This is not the case with Dreamcatcher, which centers around a myriad of events, seven main characters and an alien invasion.

This movie was a bad idea from the get... and I'm trying to understand why a director like Lawrence Kasdan would take it. Was this just a payday for people? Is that why they took the jobs? Is anyone going to be responsible for putting this garbage of a film out into audiences?

Kasdan hasn't directed a film since Mumford in 1999 which I didn't see. The last film of his I did see was Grand Canyon, which was heralded as The Big Chill for the 1990's. Ok. Anyway... I'm not exactly sure how you go from Mumford to a big budget extravaganza like this... but I suppose the guy has paid his dues. He got the script written by himself and Goldman, got his production company to work on the film... ok. And, as a whole, the direction of the film was pretty good. He gets some good scares in there, and he gets some good acting from a good cast... but that's about it.

Sorry, I'm still stuck on the story. The novel is so complex, going from the past to the present, back and forth in such a clever way, with such great visuals, character details and some wonderful scenes that would have made this film much more memorable, but the choices made were... well, they were just wrong.

I'm not going to get into the cast, because I think this film, regardless of the ok performances given, was a waste of talent. I don't think any of the actors in this film will come away with anything more than a shrug by the audiences who see this movie. No one is going to say that Morgan Freeman was great, or that Donnie Wahlberg should get a big role for his next feature. People will say that Sizemore played the same character he did in Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down.

Ok, I will mention two people. Damian Lewis and Timothy Olyphant gave two good performances.

This is not going to be one of those reviews where I say that the effects were good, or the cinematography was good because those parts of the process do not make a good film. They help, and the effects did help in this case, but ILM knows what they are doing. They always take pride in their work, and bust their ass to deliver the goods... so, there's the plug for ILM, but that's it.

Read the book. It's got some great moments in it... it kept me entertained, scared, spooked, smiling, laughing out loud... all good things that you would find in the majority of King's works and in some of his movies.

Not this movie, but, you know, his other ones.