Dream a Little Dream (1989)

DREAM A LITTLE DREAM
1989, Marc Rocco

“Show me a man who has enjoyed his school days and I’ll show you a bully and bore.”
― Robert Morley
High school truly does suck, or did suck in the case of old people like myself who are long past those years. And as such the above quote, recited by Jason Robards’ character at one point in Dream a Little Dream, a movie marketed as a romantic comedy, really does well to remind us of this. In reality Dream a Little Dream feels like a nightmarish take on the old high school movie genre. It presents the discomfort, disillusionment and disorientation of those awful teenage years and really amplifies them to a cartoonish degree. It is also a cheesy Corey Felman/Corey Haim vehicle.

Dream a Little Dream stars Corey Feldman as Bobby Keller, a burnt out teen who is failing school and, by the looks of things, life in general. He inexplicably has a hot girlfriend who does his homework for him and he seems to ignore and, I guess, treat like crap, especially since the movie revolves around him falling for another girl, with him at no point breaking up with the current girlfriend or even acknowledging that their relationship may be heading south. She in fact barely gets any screen time and their relationship is never really resolved, at least not on screen. But if I were to point out plot holes in this film, this could turn into a thesis and not the kind of article that people want to read on the internet between looking at their latest funny cat picture and animated gif of someone getting hit in the balls.

Plot holes aside, Dream a Little Dream follows a similar formula to Freaky Friday and all the other Freaky Friday type movies. An old guy and a young guy switch places and have to sort each other’s lives out. This time the take on it is Coleman, played by Jason Robards, is an old man trying to experiment with dreams by doing some weird Tai Chi looking nonsense in his front yard with his wife. The two of them are bumped into, while doing this, by teens, Bobby Keller and Lainie Diamond. This causes Coleman to end up in the body of Bobby, and his wife to end up in Lainie’s body… or something. Meanwhile Bobby is in dream world where he speaks to Coleman and gives him lousy, cryptic advice on how to rectify the situation. And, of course, by day Coleman is living Bobby’s awful teenage life and experiencing the culture shock of being a teen in the 80’s.

The thing Dream a Little Dream does well is really highlight how rubbish high school is and make it look like the most terrible place on Earth. Obviously high school is not the most terrible place on Earth, otherwise the Australian government would be putting asylum seekers in 5^th period maths instead of detention centres, but it still certainly does suck. So through Coleman’s eyes we see the bustling, claustrophobic hallways, with people throwing things all over the place, bullies that operate with no rhyme or reason, toilets that look like the kind of public bathrooms junkies O.D. in and classrooms that look even worse.

Back to the story, the love interest, Lainie, happens to be the girlfriend of Joel. Joel is an on-edge cool guy with anger issues, an alcohol problem and way too easy access to firearms. Joel is kind of the alpha male of the group Bobby hangs with. They have a rival group of punks who harass them regularly lead by a guy called Dumas. Most of the best scenes in the film are ones where the punks show up and wreak havoc. One scene especially, involving them interrupting Bobby on a date with Lainie and beating him senseless, then destroying his car. Their regular run-ins with the punks, combined with Bobby and Lainie’s forbidden affair lead to a drama heavy finale involving a drunk, gun toting Joel and a bloody Bobby cradling Lainie after breaking into her house.

There are a slew of bizarre scenes in Dream a Little Dream, including one where Bobby performs a Michael Jackson dance routine in order to woo Lainie. A routine I imagine Feldman learnt from his good friend, MJ himself. There is also a creepy scene where Lainie is drugged by her mother and her mother’s boyfriend with a sleeping tablet that is broken up and stirred into her wine. The creepiest part of that being the mother stirring it in with her finger. I don’t know why I find that creepy but I do. I guess I have a problem with people finger-banging consumables. I also have a problem with people who serve cake and lick their fingers after touching each piece. It is disgusting, why do people do that?! The cake thing doesn’t happen in this movie. It’s just a beef I have.

In closing, with all its cheese and plot holes I truly do enjoy Dream a Little Dream. I enjoy that it is played with no irony whatsoever, without self-referential jokes, or clunky “cool” references to pop culture like we get in all teen dramedies now. All the drama in this film is completely done in earnest and even when things miss the mark, like Feldman’s confusing heartfelt speech in the final act, it is still entertaining to watch, if nothing else, as a relic of a time when teen movies were without self-consciousness. Also Harry Dean Stanton features in Dream a Little Dream and Harry Dean Stanton, as we all know, is awesome.