*** Official "DREAMCATCHER" Discussion Thread - Page 2

And I really didn't get lost in it, nor did I have a lot of questions. The only question I kept asking myself was, "Why did I waste $14 and over 2hrs of my time to go see this crappy movie?" Please don't go see this at the theatre, I wouldn't even suggest it as a rental.

The first half hour was just about the only salvagable footage from this film. The rest lacked substance and sense.

Agreed. I thought it could of been a cool movie up until that point. Then it was a downhil ride pretty quickly.

I'm still waiting for Jason Lee to have a major role in something besides a Kevin Smith film.

I've got to agree with Steve, I liked it up until we see the alien. The film started off fairly intriguing. Sick guy comes into cabin. Animals running for their lives. Car crash leaving two stranded. I thought we might get another nice riff of The Thing out of the film. The scene with Jason Lee on the toliet was the best thing in the film. After that, it just got stupid. Seeing the alien that early, was a major mistake. Bringing in the the Army and Morgan Freeman, in his career worst performance, dragged the film down terribly.

But even after that, I was still enjoying it on a certain cheese level. Than that end. What the hell was up with Freeman's character trying to kill Sizemore?! I realize that he was crazy. But wasn't his main intent still on stopping the aliens? Than that stupid worm going for the kill instead of the water-way. Wasn't that the whole purpose? Who cares about that one guy with a machine gun, go infect the world. The topper was Duds being an alien. STUPID!!!

They completely ruined a decent set-up.

I may have had my hopes up too high for this film, and as such, I was disappointed. But, when you have William Goldman and Lawrence Kasdan adapting a Stephen King novel, with Kasdan directing, and Morgan Freeman leading an impressive-sounding cast, don't you have a right to have your hopes up?

That said, I enjoyed parts of it; I liked the "library concept" of Jonesy's brain. And the phone call on the gun was funny. But the movie was very scattershot, obviously condensed, with a lot of stuff shoehorned in, and more than a little incoherent. I didn't have any trouble following it, but the whole thing was very unbalanced.

Also, I couldn't help cringing when Jason Lee started sticking his finger in the peanut butter. *shudders* Need I remind everyone where that finger's been?

At any rate, an extremely disappointing movie, considering the talent involved.

How does the book end if duddits isn't an alien?

It gave Mr. Svenning disentary.

I enjoyed the book and the up to the possession of Jonesy by Mr. Gray, the movie was doing fine, keeping my interest. But unfortunately, I have to agree that it went downhill from there. Damn it, I wanted this movie to be good!!!

In the book they go into much more depth and you can see why the Morgan Freemore character wanted to kill Owen (Sizemore). But I guess there's not much time to "waste" in the movie developing the characters and that's why it seems out of place that the General reacted that way. Talking about the general, he didn't seem crazy enough in the movie. He actually came off like a normal guy instead of a bad guy like in the book.

In the book for those of you who want to know what happened to the people in the camp, Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

And making Duddits an alien...God, shoot me now!!!!! WHAT THE F@#$# WAS UP WITH THAT??? When I heard Donnie Whalberg go "I Duddits!", I thought I was going to vomit!

So sad. It had a lot of potential. Unlike some of you, I thought the book was pretty good. The material was there. Poor execution though.

I'm curious also as to how the book ends.....and also who/what exactly duddits was.


Not knowing anything about the movie/book heading in, I somewhat enjoyed the film. It was a bit scattered and forced in some situations, but its difficult to turn that large of a book into a 2 hour movie.

A couple more questions for those who have read the book:

Why is it stupid that Duddits is an alien (other than being a change from the book)? How is that any more stupid than Duddits being a magical retarded kid who can see the future?

What is the significance of the dreamcatcher? I expected the title object to have some relevance to the plot.

While Duddits being a "magical retarded kid who can see the future" is possibly just as stupid as him being an alien, it seems that the alien scenerio is a little more contrived.

In any event, I'm going to read the book now. I had many problems with the film, but I'll give the book a shot.

If Duddits was an alien, how did he have a mother (assuming the mother was not an alien too)?

David Ren

Because it misses the whole point of Duddits' character. Stephen King has often attributed "special abilities" or a certain keenness, to people in his books whom society would consider handicapped (like Nick, the deaf kid in The Stand). King sees it in a "God doesn't take something away without giving something else" sort of way. So the fact that Duddits has Down Syndrome but has other powers sort of as a compensation doesn't strike me as stupid at all.

Carlo, I guess I'm just tired of King using that cliche in his stories. (Another example is the slow-witted John Coffey in The Green Mile.)

Also, it seems just a little too convenient that someone with ESP is here to save the world from aliens. To me, it's slightly less contrived (but still cliched, I'll admit) to have a battle between two alien races. In any given story, I'm willing to accept one hugely implausible premise, but two is usually too many.

Well it is certainly your right to be tired of King's use of that plot device. But having read just about all of his works, I find it to be a recurring thread in a lot of them - it's probably part of his belief system. Or just a way he rationalizes why some people are born with a disadvantage. I know I'd like to believe it's true. I was just questioning the use of the word "dumb" in reference to it: to me it is one of King's tenets and that's why it makes its way into a lot of his stories. Is it cliche? I'm not the most well-read man so I don't know if other authors use it a lot, I haven't run across many.

Carlo, since you seem to have read the book, could you explain the significance of the dreamcatcher?

I have never cared for King as an author. I tried reading the Shining and Needful Things and couldn't believe how long winded he was. I put the books down and never picked them up.

On the other hand, I have liked some of his movies and who doesnt like a good Horror flick, so I went with some of my friends and...
Wellll, What can I say that other people have already said?

It's a Really Bad mess of a movie. Started out good and then it went off on so many tangents that I dont think it knew what it was trying to say.
Lawrence Kasdan, the guy who wrote The Empire Strikes back and my favorite movie, The Big Chill Directed and cowrote this movie?????!!!?

You have the friendship movie and then the Alien movie and the Military Revenge movie and the...

My question is, what happend? How did they get Morgan Freeman and the other guys in the movie to sign up for this?
Was it a good script at one point and it was lost in rewrites or bad editing?

Holy crow! Don't try Anne Rice, then!

Seriously, I always thought King wrote in quite an easy-to-read, almost-conversational manner. Sure his books may seem big, but I think he uses bigger fonts (and/or larger spacing between sentences) in his hardcovers than most other authors (especially recently). It always takes me about a minute to a minute and a half to read a King page in hardcover. Anne Rice can take me about three to four minutes per page!

Well I have NOT seen the film (and don't plan to now, with a friend's recommendation to skip it, and he and I liked the book), but I will say this: 600+ page novels are, by nature, very hard to put into a 2 hour movie. The Shawshank Redemption was a 2+ hour movie based on a short story by King (like around 200 pages). In fact, most of what I consider to be the "bad" King movies are based on his full-novel, longer works. The shorter stuff works better (Shawshank, Green Mile) when translated to film.

Phew! Talk about putting me on the spot! Well I admit, I read it once when it came out years ago, and not since. Also I have read quite a bit since then so my memory is not very good when it comes to the details of this novel. The one thing my mind is saying right now (subliminally?) is that I thought the dreamcatcher and its webby-design was just an allegory to how Duddits was the center of their own human-dreamcatcher-web, how all the threads from Pete, Jonesy, Henry and Beav were all connected back to Duddits. I may be just randomly connecting loose thoughts though.

The Shining was my favourite King novel. I'll admit that the first 50-75 pages were boring, but after that, I couldn't put the book down, literally. I ended up finishing it over a weekend.

I'm not a big fan of King novels either.

But, right now I'm reading The Stand. Amazing book, one of my top 5 and I'm not even finished.