In Your Dreams (2008) Reviews

• A total disaster

  lor_2014-12-02

  Why on Earth would anyone want to resurrect the desultory '70s genre of British Sex Comedies? You would have to ask filmmaker Gary Sinyor whose IN YOUR DREAMS attempts that feat with disastrous results. It's even worse than those assembly-line junkers. I watched this film to see my fave Susan George, but instead of a comeback role Sinyor makes her the butt of dumb jokes, e.g., her character keeps farting uncontrollably. Give me a break! She plays the step-mom of nebbish hero Dexter Fletcher, and the film's shoddiness is evident in the opening sequence wherein Susan looks the same age (old) in a 1980 sequence of Dexter's childhood as she does in the film proper set in 2007. Dex grows up to be a dental assistant working alongside lovely Parminder Nagra (the BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM star who unfortunately doesn't have an agent the caliber of Keira Knightley's). He suddenly develops the curse of dreaming things (cheaply shot fantasies that Sinyor stages with zero imagination) that later come true. The twist is that he can intervene with the foreknowledge of having remembered the dreams' content, and is able to intervene and alter the real-life results. That slim premise is an excuse for Sinyor to load up on sniggering suggestive dialog that is consistently embarrassing rather than funny. An early example is when Dex hits a tennis ball into Elize du Toit's mouth, then takes her to his dentist's chair to try and remove it. Her boyfriend phones and Dex tells him: "She'll have to call you back, she's got one of my balls in her mouth". Gary is so enamored of this line he has it repeated later in the film. Du Toit becomes the romantic lead opposite Dex after the tennis ball is removed, but like Nagra she needs a new agent, preferably Charlize Theron's. Another actress I love whose roles have diminished (since she is "of a certain age") pops up as Dex' pal, a lesbian private eye. Linda Hamilton is saddled with an unconvincing Bronx accent and like the rest of the able cast is thoroughly wasted rushing through unfunny antics. For a sex comedy there's precious little sex, and fans only get fleeting glimpses of Anouska Mond's bare breasts for their price of admission. Julie Ege, where are you now that we need you?