New Zealand director Vincent Ward brings us "What Dreams May Come," a metaphysical and New Agey disquisition on life after death and the power of true love. The film is loosely based on Richard Matheson's novel "What Dreams May Come." From the book, screenwriter Ron Bass, author of such cinematic masterpieces as "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" and "When a Man Loves a Woman," manages, together with Ward, to create a convoluted piece of fluff -- a cinematic Bryan Adam's song.
The first half of the movie is concerned entirely with exposition. In an impossibly cute moment, Chris Nielsen (Robin Williams) and Annie (Anabella Sciorra) meet when their boats collide in a lake on the Swiss/Italian border.
They know immediately that they're soul mates. They fall in love, have two children and everything is just dandy until their dog has to be put to sleep and their two children die in a car accident.
They manage to keep it together for a couple of years until Chris is killed in yet another car accident. Once he dies, Chris meets his old buddy Albert (Cuba Gooding Jr.), who serves as his guide to being dead. Chris stays on Earth for a while, watches his funeral and haunts Annie before he finally takes off for heaven.
According to the film, everyone creates their own heaven, but according to very specific guidelines. If you've seen the trailer for "What Dreams May Come" then you've seen the amazing special effects. Chris creates a painter's heaven in which flowers dissolve into oil paint at his touch. Birds flying overhead change color at his whim.
The computer generated graphics are amazing. But don't worry about missing anymore of these fantastic special effects. You've already seen them in the trailer. Besides, Williams only swims through paint for a few minutes. What follows is a gratuitously schmaltzy tale strung together by a series of beautiful views of a lake in the middle of a mountain range.
Albert's lessons are juxtaposed with flashbacks of Chris's life with Annie and the children. Williams and Sciorra, who are typically strong actors, spend the majority of the time looking at each other and the children through eyes brimming with tears and professing their undying love to each other. What could be a tragic tail of two lovers falls flat because there is no substance to their relationship.
Williams adds some element of humor to the story, but his comic moments seem more like disruptions in this melodramatic tale.
So finally, 45 minutes later, we get to the crux of the movie. Annie can't deal with the loss of her soul mate. She commits suicide and goes to hell. According to the movie, hell "is for those that don't realize that they're dead." And while Chris is hanging out in heaven with their old dog and the children, Annie is down in hell in a place that resembles something out of John Carpenter's "Escape from L.A." For Chris, heaven isn't heaven without Annie. So he embarks on the impossible journey into the seventh layer of hell, risking his own sanity to save her.
This is Ward's third and most publicized film. His first film, "The Navigator" (1988), follows the journey of 14th century plague victims as they tunnel into the future.
His second film, "Map of the Human Heart" (1992), is the romantic story of an Eskimo man's journey from Alaska to London and back. "What Dreams May Come" is a weak addition to Ward's otherwise impressive directorial repertoire.
Ward aims high in this movie. He attempts to juggle questions of immortality and religion and examine the complexities of interpersonal and familial relationships. He tries to create a life-affirming, thought-provoking movie. However, he falls hopelessly short.
Ward began his career as a painter and then moved to the film medium as an art director. In "What Dreams May Come," he stays true to his artistic roots. Visually, the movie is stunning. Albert tells Chris that "thought is real, the physical is the illusion."
Ward could benefit from this advice. It's hard to get away from a bad script, even with cutting edge computer graphics, beautiful scenery, a seventy-million dollar budget and a star-studded cast.
