Metacritic reviews

So breathtaking, so beautiful, so bold in its imagination, that it's a surprise at the end to find it doesn't finally deliver.

What Dreams May Come has the sensibilities of an art film placed into a big-budget feature with an A-list cast.

Too bad. What dreams may come, indeed, when such enticing foreplay ends with a consummation devoutly to be missed.

What Dreams May Come, based on a novel by Richard Matheson and directed by Vincent Ward, the New Zealand filmmaker noted for his skill at creating lavish cinematic dreamscapes, represents the uncomfortable collision of two ideas about filmmaking, one commercial, the other eccentrically, ambitiously dreamy.

A heaping serving of metaphysical gobbledygook wrapped in a physically striking package.

Like most dreams revisited with eyes wide open, this one's content dissolves into a transparent puddle of inchoate thoughts and predictable iconography.

What's so disappointing is that the film had so much potential as a concept. The story slowly degenerates into a plodding, sappy bore.

The insidious influence of too much therapy permeates this misguided and very long picture.

A bottomless trough of mystic swill, is too confused to even fulfill the paradigm's most basic requirements.

How can a film look so radiant and be so hollow?