WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

Bad Scripts Go To Hell

Robin Williams plays a doctor married to artist Annabella Sciorra. They live perfect lives until their kids die in an auto wreck. After surviving that tragedy, Williams also dies in an auto pile-up. Although some really bad things have happened to him, he feels better when he gets to Heaven. But when his wife, in her grief, turns to suicide, according to "the rules" she's automatically sent to Hell. Williams, unable to reconcile himself to Heaven without his soulmate, determines to follow her into Hell and either bring her back, or stay with her there.

Another arguement for providing remote controls in theaters. If  I'd had one, I could have fast-forwarded to the beautiful photography and special effects so bountiful once Williams enters the afterlife, freezing frames to take in the details. I could have enjoyed, over and over, trhe film's best scene showing a car landing on his Mork's head. And best of all, I could use the "mute" button.

Rarely does a film contain so many cool ideas, only to waste almost all of them by drowning them in pathos and syrupy melodrama. Every character with every line is on the verge of tears and there's only a laugh every 45 minutes or so to relieve the tedium. Heaven, for all it's beauty, is unintentionally portrayed as a pretty dull and stifling place. Things promise to pick up once Max Von Sydow shows up to lead Williams into Hell, but even Hades itself seems no worse than the Haunted House at Disneyland. At least there's a few laughs among the tormented. It's just frustrating to think how much fun this concept could be if it had been played without such a heavy hand.

Angels; demons; ghosts; field of decapitated living human heads; flying; a literal presentation of the Judeo-Christian afterlife.

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