Thursday, February 9, 2012

The Good, The Bad, And The Disappointing.

DREAM HOUSE (2011)
Here's the thing: I'm okay with bad movies. Really, I am. If a movie is bad, but understands that it is bad, even better. I can't tell you how many times I've watched Deep Blue Sea (1999) and thoroughly enjoyed it. What I can't stand is a disappointing movie. A movie that has a lot of potential, but tries too hard to be greater than it is. Dream House unfortunately fell under the disappointing category. The plot was promising. A man named Will Atenton (Daniel Craig) moves into a house with a dark and bloody history with his wife (Rachel Weisz) and kids. Maybe it's a story that's been told before, but it's one that, for the most part, has a good history of always delivering a satisfying tale.

The actors themselves are all very talented and they make of the script what they can, but you can only breath so much life into something that refuses to live. I understand that the case could be made that half of the movie takes place in Will Atenton's fantasy land and therefore you can make the argument that his fantasy is stilted and flat. Except for the one simple fact that Will is supposed to be a successful writer, and therefore he should be able to dream up some better dialog. Still, the film limps along--wounded, but still pushing through, mainly by way of the excellent chemistry between Craig, Weisz, and Watts. It's not until the third act that it really falls flat on its face, pulling in unnecessary characters, trying to make things fit where they don't belong, and generally mucking up the entire structure of the story. In the end, the film's biggest issue is that it simply tries too hard: on one hand, we have a movie about a man gone mad with grief, on the other hand, we have a whodunit helmed by an unreliable narrator. It was Fight Club (1999) and Taken (2008) with just a splash of The Shining (1980). It couldn't chose between being a dark psychological thriller or a campy horror movie, and instead fell somewhere in the dead-end grey area between "a feel good" film and a "good feel bad" film.

My only advice to someone who wants to see this film? Don't watch the trailer. It gives away a twist that might have bumped the movie up a star for me if I hadn't been waiting for it to come around. 

12 comments:

  1. I haven't seen this one - but I seem to remember reading there were post-production problems - perhaps they affected what ended up on screen too much. Still - a great review!

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  2. Maybe I'm just overly sensitive to that sort of thing, but even without knowing that I felt like there was a god-hand of some disgruntled producer or something mucking around in there. It certainly had the feel of the movie that was off the a great start...and then suddenly chickened out and/or censored itself halfway through. I have no idea what happened post-production, but now that you mentioned it, I'll have to look into it! Thanks!

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  3. You just like DBS because Saffron Burrows strips down, soaking we. And ll cool j has an appeal that defeats orientation.
    This one looked bad from the get-go.Thx for the warning!

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  4. What? That's absurd! Of course I don't...

    Yeah, I couldn't even finish that. Those are the exact reasons I like DBS. And don't forget Samuel L. Jackson!

    You're very welcome! Glad I could help you avoid it.

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  5. I saw the trailer a while ago and I was baffled by why they revealed twist there. I was hoping maybe there is another twist in the film itself but apparantly there wasn't. The movie looks like such a wreck, it's too bad, with such actors it should have better script.

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  6. Thanks for the comment! I would have been completely fine with them revealing the twist...if the movie had actually been a psycho-thriller journey in this one man's delusions. That's the movie I was hoping for, and it would've been awesome. Instead, he accepted reality a little too soon so they could further the murder mystery plot and it just stilted the whole movie. More of a juggling act than an actual movie.

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  7. I had a minimum of desire to see this as I am not really a Naomi Watts fan. And after the big twist in the trailer, I hemmed a little more, but after this review, no effing way. ;)

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  8. I don't love her or hate her, most of the time she's just "eh". Though I did enjoy her in I Heart Huckabees, but I enjoyed everything about I Heart Huckabees. Glad to be able to keep you away from it!

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  9. Wow. after reading your review I realized I'd seen this movie and then totally forgotten it, which perhaps reveals how I felt about the movie. Great review though!

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  10. That'll tell you all you need to know about this movie! I'm glad I wrote the review when I did because it's already slipping from my memory...

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  11. Great review M. I thought the same thing Sati did. I figured if they have away the twist in the trailer there must be a bigger twist later. Is there a worse film that gave away the twist in the trailer?
    http://filmsketchr.blogspot.com
    http://www.thegeektwins.com

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  12. Thanks! It was definitely a twist disappointment, to say the least. I know there are movies that give away important clips in the trailer, but you usually don't associate the clips with the movie until you've seen it all the way through. Unless you're like me and watch the trailer 1000 times.

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