Dreams Come True

Anyone who has viewed Dreams Come True and can bring himself to comment on it at all is indeed quite a special person. I lived and breathed this film for a couple of days many years ago, while transcribing the dialogue for foreign distributors.

The remarkable part of Dreams Come True is that we have characters who can astrally project--how cool!--and they choose to enact the tamest, dullest fantasies. Between the unfortunately low budget and the subpar performances, it is a cruel waste of an interesting idea. Nevertheless, I salute anyone who finishes making a film, let alone gets it distributed. Dreams Come True is bad enough to enjoy for its badness, and that's an accomplishment.

I was Stan in the movie "Dreams Come True". Stan was the friend that worked at the factory with the main character and ended getting his arm smashed in the machinery and got carried out screaming (where was the ambulance?) The acting in this movie was for the most part pretty poor with mostly local actors from the Fox Valley, Wisconsin. I saw the movie on the big screen. It played 2 nights in 3 theaters and was something special to see yourself on the big screen. I may be bias, but overall, I enjoyed it. Also the soundtrack was the band Spooner, who later became Garbage. My brother, Steve Charlton was also in the movie. He played Swenson the man who comes to the door on crutches to talk with the police.

I remember watching this movie growing up. I remember watching it when I was about 13. At this age, a comedy about with astral travelling that contained sex scenes should have been awesome. To my surprise, however, this movie sucked balls. The plot made no sense. The acting was horrible. The sex scene, whilst graphic, turned me on less than that time I saw my neighbours dog eating its own vomit. The makers of this movie should be ashamed. It is hardly surprising that the director of this video went on to a long career of working in the sound department of other movies that no one with half a brain would bother watching. I have no idea why anybody would track down this movie and bother watching it in 2011, but if you do decide that that is want you want to do, maybe consider suicide instead.

This happened to be the first movie I reviewed for my high school newspaper, because it had some kind of four-walling special engagement at my local mall. The youth appeal was clear, with the attractive young couple, and more so, the mystical theme. Before the internet, teenagers in the '80s were fascinated by paranormal possibilities like astral projection, especially if it involved sex scenes.

To be honest, I don't remember it that well, and no longer have that review (which was contained on some kind of floppy disk and printed in crude dot matrix format), but I would see it again out of curiosity. I do remember it being hokey, and even as a salacious teenager myself, it didn't seem so erotic.

I'm now a film professor, so I write about movies for a living, and I will say this: for all the hype around the supernatural, there's not many movies about astral projection. IMDb lists less than 20, most of which you've never heard of, and most of which are only vaguely about the subject (or about another form of extrasensory experience). Maybe it has simply fallen out of fashion, or maybe bad movies about it have made astral projection less appealing.

Plenty of 80s loved up and loveable determination, perseverance, and personal will power, freedom, and dash of 80s signature toughness, and attitude - coupled with dreams, dreaminess, passion, and fantasy.

Comes across with more than a touch of - real, and regular life in a fantasy, and fantasy in real, and regular life.

The characters are cute, casual, natural, genuine, relatable, charming, fun, interesting, attractive, and un-pretentious.

An America behind what Springsteen, and Mellencamp fantasized, and celebritized - but this is the REAL life and dreams and fantasies behind the real deal - Sweet, fun, beautiful, dreamy, determined, perserving, and believing. That special sense and awareness of a greater dream, and reality, in the midst of one that is sort of already pretty great as it is - but normal.

The astral dreams kick in, it skirts the broad precipice between sci-fi and fantasy, never fully crossing the line into one or the other - again in the 80s believable, fun, innovative, and loved up spirit.

"Dream, dream, dream. That is all I want to do!"

The music score is great too!

In this day and age, Dreams Come True is an equally enjoyable escapism from both the mundane, and the overly contrived that can make you laugh, and feel good and interested about things - Just as it was intended to be when it was created in '84!

Great movie, and the neon and the sparkles make it even greater! :)