 If moviegoers do decide to sit out the weekend in front of their TV sets to follow developments in the war, they are not likely to miss much, most film critics appear to agree. They have generally meted out low ratings to all four new films. Catching the worst reviews of the lot is the Morgan Freeman starrer Dreamcatcher, adapted from a Stephen King novel by William Goldman and directed by Lawrence Kasdan. I went into Dreamcatcher hoping -- somewhat perversely, given the state of the world outside -- for a good scare," writes A.O. Scott in the New York Times, "and found myself before long howling with laughter." (A few critics suggest that what the movie really needed was Terry Gilliam, of Monty Python and Brazil fame, to direct it.) Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal refers to it as "a horror-free horror flick" The funny business, Scott suggests, was not intended. Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News opines that given the talent that went into the making of the movie "Dreamcatcher has no business being this bad." "Incoherent, inane and interminable," is the way Claudia Puig describes it in USA Today. And Stephen Hunter concludes his review in the Washington Post this way: "All in all -- well, there is no all in all. There are just parts. Some fit, some don't. Some are cool, some aren't. It's the craziest thing you ever saw." (By the way, critics are giving the 14-minute, computer-animated short Final Flight of the Osiris -- part of the Animatrix series plugging the upcoming The Matrix Reloaded -- terrific notices. It precedes the Dreamcatcher feature in many theaters.) |
