Dream a Little Dream (1989)

A lot of fun.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Bobby Kellar has a crush on Lainie Diamond, girlfriend of school jerk Joel. Coleman is working on an experiment which will help him move into a place where Dreams are reality. When an accident occurs Coleman finds himself in Bobby's body and can only contact Bobby in his dreams. Part of his wife's mind has also ended up in Lainie. To bring his and his wife's body back to reality, Coleman must agree to fix Bobby's messed up life.....Out of all the body swap movies of the late eighties, this has to be the one that killed that little sub-genre, because it's boring beyond belief.Yes, it has the two Corey's in it, but Haim is hardly there, and Feldman spends his role acting like a posh Michael Jackson for the majority of the film.But the main problem is that the film tries too hard to be something different from the rest of the body swap films, and in doing that turns a neat concept into something more mundane, even macabre in some scenes.Films like Big, and Vice Versa were fun movies, predictable, but fun nevertheless. Here we get Jason Robards maundering around a dreamworld with awful foley work, and Feldman popping up every now and again acting as smug as smug can be.And it's just gets too complicated and boring to understand, and to care about what is going on and what happens to the characters.Stick with The Lost Boys and License To Drive....

As far as I know, 'Dream a Little Dream' was the last gasp to try and breath life into the ' body switch comedies', you know, those movies where a kid and an adult switch minds and one gets to be the other and suffer their inane problems. Sometimes it works, I liked that old Disney comedy 'Freaky Friday' with Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris and I liked Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage in 'Vice Versa'. On the other end of the spectrum is this insufferable mess which I feel at a loss to explain but here goes: Jason Robards plays a nice old man whose only gripe is that kids keep trespassing through his yard. He and his wife (Piper Laurie) have a theory that one can transfer his or her mind into someone else and live in their body. On his lawn while trying out his experiment he is hit by a bicycle driven by Bobby Keller (Corey Feldman) and the obvious happens. Feldman spends the rest of the movie as Robards and vice versa.The problem is that not for one second can you believe that Robards is occupying his body. He walks like Corey Feldman, talks like Corey Feldman so the effect is lost on us. I had a hard time trying to notice because I couldn't stop looking at Feldman's outfit which look as if he's late for band practice or Michael Jackson dress up day.As for Robards wife, the movie wastes a lot of time and half-baked theology on how her mind has drifted off and is in danger of falling into the Q collective or some such. The movie halfway explains that idea only to pull the rug out from under it and explains that it was all a joke so that the screenwriter won't have to think of a way to get her back.'Dream a Little Dream' drums up a lot of impossibly complicated ideas but is too lazy a movie to work them out. When the screenplay gets too complicated, the soundtrack starts booming some irritating rock song to pad the rest of the scene. And just to show you how desperate the Direct-to-Video market is: There's a sequel.

Still...it is an interesting film. Like a hodge-podge of teen-movie clutter that is highly stylized to look classy and meaningful. Yet, it is not...this movie doesn't necessarily succeed, though it makes for solid head-scratching material. Even so, I liked it on some level.Pros: The Corey's try something different (slightly); very atmospheric, if nothing else; a nice, if a bit loud, soundtrack.Cons: Everything else. That includes who ever edited this thing. Also includes Feldman's botched efforts to play dual rolls convincingly.Check it out if you want to see the Corey's while they were still in C+ condition.I have seen plenty worse, trust me.

Great coming of age vehicle for Corey Feldman, who once again shows the potential he did in "Stand By Me" earlier in his career. Bobby Keller (Feldman) is a teenager with unusual problems. When an older man who lives down the street (Robards) tries a transcendental experiment in order to extend the lives of him and his skeptical but humoring wife (Laurie), they quite literally become trapped in the bodies of Keller and his dream girl, Lainie (Salenger).Bobby must figure out how to switch back to his own body by a certain deadline or be trapped. Worse is the fact that Lainie doesn't know what's happened to her, so Bobby has little time to win her and convince her of their predicament before she will be lost forever. Although Haim is annoying (as usual) as Feldman's buddy "Dinger" (puh-leez), the movie has some funny moments (like when Robards' character is trying to teach Feldman's how to be suave and Feldman is trying to teach Robards how to be inconspicuous) and some sweet ones, (like when Bobby is trying to win Lainie's heart). Although some of it may be too precocious for the younger kids (and too dorky for the more sophsticated older teens), I found it to be fun and nostalgic. Great movie for a rainy day.