"Dream Scenario" - Review

Professor Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) is an ordinary man, with an ordinary life, with a beautiful home and a beautiful wife. Then he starts appearing in everybody's dreams, and he thinks to himself: how did I get here?

Marketed as a wacky comedy, hoping to get by on the meme potential of Nicolas Cage being in dreams. Instead, the film is actually a dark fable about a man's life being ruined, in a spiralling downfall, complete with satirical swipes at media, memes and celebrity in the modern age. It takes the concept, stretches it, bounces it and toys with it as far as it will go. It has a droll, Scandinavian sense of humour (including a scene where Dylan Gelula tells him about a particularly vivid sex dream), even as it follows a man forced out of his home and community and breaking down. There is a fantastic dystopian sequence featuring Nicholas Braun, nobody let Silicon Valley watch it. Cage injects the film with a lot of pathos without being cartoony, keeping his crown as the greatest actor alive. Cute use of The Talking Heads too. Nice to have cameos from Amber Midthunder, Lily Gao and Dylan Baker.