Nicolas Cage stars in a movie called Dream Scenario.
An ordinary man, dumpy and balding, Paul, a college professor, just wants to be published for his study of nature – ants, in particular.
One morning, his daughter told him about a dream she had in which people and things dropped out of the sky, smashing a glass table at poolside in autumn. He was raking leaves. She began to float away as she begged her dad for help. He did nothing.
The inaction disturbs him. He feels it is an injustice and not his personality.
Days later, he meets an old girlfriend in a theater lobby. She tells him she had a dream about him. In it, he is passive and does nothing.
He is told later by a friend that at a dinner party he threw, his wife told of a dream she had with Paul. A guest said she, too, dreamed of him.
Soon, this becomes an epidemic, with people worldwide dreaming of this man. Science cannot explain it.
Paul begins embracing the notoriety. He visits an agency that is going to promote him. He has dreams of finally publishing his book on ants. Instead, they have plans for a Sprite commercial. He is disappointed.
A young girl at the agency is the first to tell him of a dream she had with him in which he is not merely an observer. “We f*ck,” she tells him, and she is eager to reenact the dream with him because it is so sexually intense.
He keeps telling her he is married and does not want to participate, but she has plied him with alcohol, and he goes to her apartment. The reenactment is not the erotic experience she craves. He is so nervous he farts, and it puts a deflating pin in the built-up scenario.
Not long after this disaster, people’s dreams of Paul start to turn sinister. His own daughter has a frightening dream of her father. Other dreams are so horrific his students do not even want to attend his class. The school has to intervene and conduct a special therapy session just so they can be in the room with him.
They can’t. They are triggered. The students turn on him and drive him out of the school. Paul did nothing. He’s just a guy. Reality means nothing to these people. Their concocted impressions of him and their dreams (that he cannot control) are too much for them to handle.
Paul is put on leave. He goes back to the agency to take the Sprite commercial. They say that recent events have caused them to have to pivot.
Since he is now scary, they can set him up with interviews with the “alt-right”– Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Jordan Peterson.
This annoyed me until I realized that the right in the movie is depicted as non-judgmental. They just wanted to interview him. They weren’t scared of him. They weren’t interested in canceling him. He did nothing wrong.
The movie becomes a scathing indictment of “snowflakery,” being triggered, cancel culture, and intolerance. In other words, it’s depicting the left and its idiocy.
When Paul attempts to apologize to the masses, even when he didn’t do anything wrong, his wife says she is embarrassed by his weakness and separates the marriage.
This is an obvious allusion to the rightwing admonition that one should never apologize to the left for offenses they believe you have committed.
This was not an overtly political movie until it was.
I give it a thumbs up.
I’ve always liked Nicolas Cage, even in Valley Girl. Never knew his politics though, but this Dream Scenario may provide more evidence he is one of us.
It’s good to know not all hollywood types are commies.
I added Dream Scenario to my watch list.
I typically skip Nic Cage films. Seems like he hires Bialystock & Bloom as script consultants and ends up in some pretty lame stuff.
Cage, like Gary Busey and “THE” Christopher Walken always seem to make me ask”what were they thinking” when I encounter them in movies…
Thanks for the synopsis – I’d like to watch it.
mortem tyrannis
izlamo delenda est …
Getting “Trump” vibes from this.
Sounds like a good one. I’ll have to sleep on it tonight.
If you dream of someone you know, did they also dream (or think) of you?
you put a lot of effort into that review. much appreciated but now I don’t need to watch it. I just watched the first episode of Lucky Hank with Bob odenkirk on Amazon prime last night and it was good. he is an underrated professor at an underrated school and he gets cancelled for being honest. kind of a Jordan Peterson spoof. so far I recommend it
Cage is getter better—and finnier—as he ages. I saw the preview for this movie and will watch it.
Also I just read that Disney will not be making another “National Treasure” movie, at least one with him in it. Their loss, and ours. Cage has voiced his disappointment with Disney’s bad decision, but if this new movie is any indication, you can’t keep a good man down.
And “The Retirement Plan” was a silly, but funny, movie. Cage does the Jeff Bridges Funky Old Guy shtick pretty well here.
That’s high praise.
Good synopsis. Will add that to my watch list. ;^)
I’ll probably wait for the book to come out.
Well, I know someone else who had a dream, and look at how that turned out.
Great movie analysis. It confirms the pattern of the left’s obsession with manipulation.
Their warp “visions” are translated into a socialist narrative of indoctrination used against the conservative opposition – the left’s modus operandi.
Whitey white white cracker ass, you might be taking about the most covert Marxist operative who ever lived – Martin Luther King Jr. He made sure President Johnson got his wish – “I’ll have them n*****s voting Democratic for the next two hundred years”.
I like Nicolas Cage’s work. He’s got that weirdness needed for this quirky role. James Bader is favorite of mine, too.
Another good Cage film (there are many) is “Lord of War”.
Hope he shops for a studio to do the next “National Treasure”.
You made it sound interesting. I’ll turn it on if I come across it.