THE EPIC FILM JOURNAL - DAY SEVEN

Film Number 10 – The Dream Team

Finding this movie was the goldmine, i was browsing through lots of miscellaneous titles getting quite bored and then I found this one. Looking at the cover I expected a dreadful comedy and even Michael Keaton couldn’t seal the deal, as I was about to move on I looked a bit closer and realized that Christopher Llyod was in it; the film began moments later.

The film starts very slowly showing the day to day lives of four patients at a sanitarium. All four have very different qualities one is a pathological liar (Keaton) another believes that he is a high ranking professional doctor (Llyod), Peter Boyle’s character believes he is Jesus Christ and the other guy is absolutely bat shit insane. The four characters all have group counseling together daily where they all get very angry with each other and bicker. In an effort to try and give them a break from spending every waking moment in the sanitarium their head doctor decides to take them all on a field trip to watch a Yankee game. They all get in the minivan and drive into New York, whilst driving the mean streets someone has to go to the toilet, the doctor take the patient into the alley way and manages to witness a murder by some crooked cops, the cops beat him unconscious and the patient runs and now all four are alone and lost in New York.

The concept is old, tired and unoriginal, being “Lost in New York” (this is actually the subtitle of Home Alone 2) and going through lots of farcical calamities in true Out Of Towner’s style. The most recent incarnation of this premise was last month’s Date Night which starred Steve Carrel and Tina Fey, whilst being entirely predictable and unimaginative the film only worked thanks to its two lead stars. I do find it interesting that this plot is constantly being used every few years and wonder when they will finally stop.

Having said all of my negative reaction to the plot The Dream Team is really a lot of fun, all the actors work extremely well together. The film begins very slowly and takes a while to really begin, throughout the film there is a bit of repetition in plotting and scenes sometimes feel rather redundant. I think the film would have benefited from tightening the script and being edited down to a clean hour and a half. I always love to see films from this era because they are always loaded with funky friendly Rap Music that is always humorously out of place with its toned down straight shooting white characters. The song that serenades us through the scene transitions here is the classic Walk the Dinosaur by Was(not was) and it fits in perfectly.

The actors are all at the top of their game; Michael Keaton’s character leads the group seeming very street wise and competent but also out of his mind at the same time. Christopher Llyod is so entertaining and fun, it really is a shame that we don’t see him very much anymore. In fact that goes for Keaton as well, what happened this guy used to be a big deal and we barely see him in anything. Throughout the film we get to see all the characters go off by themselves and delve in to their past, going to see their family and friends, this is done very well and doesn’t get sentimental and mushy.

I say this a lot but it is generally very surprising that this film is not very well known. The film came out the same year as Batman, Christopher Llyod would have just been in Back to the Future 2 It is defiantly a film that I would expect to have seen on TV by now and up until five hours ago I had never heard of it.
It’s not a must see film but if you enjoy 80’s style comedies and the actors involved you will have a lot of fun.

On the whole the film gets a 7 out of 10.