Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dream Scenario’ on Max, a Nutty Existential Nicolas Cage Vehicle from A24

Nicolas Cage stars in Dream Scenario (now streaming on Max), a surreal satire that’s the first English-language film from Norwegian writer-director Kristoffer Borgli. At first glance, Cage seems like he might be playing an average boring guy, but the lovably eccentric powerhouse actor is incapable of being either average or boring (unless he’s in a National Treasure movie). He plays a college prof who millions of people suddenly and inexplicably find strolling through their dreams, a clever premise that damn well better be more Adaptation Cage than Willy’s Wonderland Cage.  

DREAM SCENARIO: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Paul Matthews (Cage) puts the milk in milquetoast. Or maybe he puts the toast in it. Who knows. But he’s an average middle-aged guy – paunchy midsection, style-free eyeglasses, balding – who teaches evolutionary biology. He has a wife and two daughters and a suburban home that’s a bit spacious but not overly indulgent. He bores sleepy-eyed students during lectures then sits down for dinner and asks his teen daughters (Lily Bird and Jessica Clement) to please put their phones down while they’re at the table. He carries around an unfulfilled desire to write a book. Maybe he’s still up for some missionary-position sex with his wife Janet (Julianne Nicholson) if she is, but most of the time, probably not. His life is nice, or at least nice enough. Some of us will look at it and feel all too f—ing SEEN. 

But I think deep down he’s an incredible weirdo. Sometimes, his eccentricities seep through his bland exterior. He’s a man of science who dismisses hooey, which isn’t a terrible thing, except he’s kind of a dick about it. He seems to enjoy having the power to tell 19-year-olds to stop talking during class (possibly because he has no real power anywhere else). He protests too much when his ego takes a shot, his insecurities prompting him to puff out his chest even though he hasn’t lifted a weight in decades. He huffs and puffs when he defends himself, and the words never really come out right. He’s really… soft. And annoying. And painfully anti-sexy. He also farts when he gets nervous, and we learn this in a scene where a woman who dreamt about him wants to reenact her dream in real life. I’ll say no more, but it just might be Nicolas Cage in his finest form, and it might make you scream.

Right – the dream thing. It’s what happens to Paul. His daughter sees him in her dream, passively standing by as the sky literally falls around them. And she’s not alone, because countless people have experienced the same thing, Paul just strolling by, doing nothing as something weird and/or terrible happens to them. He has nothing to do with it, no X-Men mutant power prompting the subconscious invasions, no explanations whatsoever. It’s just a strange phenomenon. He’s interviewed for a TV news segment and becomes famous and suddenly his lecture hall is full of people asking him questions, and when he insists he’s happier not being the center of attention, you don’t believe it for a second. You f—ing liar, Paul.

One explicable thing about the dream scenario (drink!) is, the more people see Paul on TV or in memes or whatever, the more people dream about him. This makes him want to capitalize on his fame. Not grossly, mind you. He just wants to land a book deal. He meets with a group of nebulous people doing nebulous things, which I think means they’re in marketing. They work at a firm known as Thoughts? – question mark necessary – and are led by Trent (Michael Cera), who’s less about Paul writing a book (it’d be about ants, of course) and more about finding a way for Paul to be holding a can of Sprite when he strolls through the dreamspace. Before he can even really consider the surely lucrative offer of bringing brand marketing to the heretofore unbreachable realm of the subconscious, people start dreaming of him doing terrible, awful things to them. Torture and murder and all that. And then he gets canceled, for doing exactly nothing in reality, and at this point I believe we’ve come to a point. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: If I were a betting man, which I’m not – I’m very milquetoast that way! – I’d wager Dream Scenario is in the same cinematic universe as Being John Malkovich.

Performance Worth Watching: Cage is in fine, fine form here. Without him, this movie might not work at all. 

Memorable Dialogue: Paul and Janet, in a tiff: 

Paul: We both know you score high in neuroticism. It’s best to just own it and be pragmatic about it.

Janet: You score high in assholeness. 

Sex and Skin: None really, despite the content of said aforementioned dream that’s the subject of reenactment. In fact, that scene is more like an outdoor shower in the Arctic than anything, you know, hot. 

Our Take: It’s quite amusing watching Cage find another performative gear in Dream Scenario, turning up the strange and ugly little truths of his character – his insecurities, his sense of masculinity, his yearnings – and luring them to the surface so they can be examined through the distorted lens of this absurdist scenario. And it’s his performance that holds the film together as it bounces from the psychosexual to the psychosociological to the psychosocial, and by that last one I mean psychosocial media, which chews him up as a nut to be admired and spits him out as a nut to be abhorred. Thematically, the film is either an explosion of almost-focused implications about where our brains fit into the 2020s world, which becomes a scattered shitshow in the dysfunctional third act, or a highly accurate this-is-our-brains-on-the-internet-any-questions? metaphor for the internet’s disorienting effect on our minds and souls. Take your pick, although I assert the latter is a bit of a stretch.

Even though the narrative eventually loses its grip on clarity, for the most part, Dream Scenario is a terrifyingly funny satire that gives us an opportunity to wrestle with another inspired Cage showcase. His interactions with Nicholson find truth and comedy in equal measure, and excels in moments that find Paul being morally tested, whether it’s the opportunity to cash in on this unusual phenomenon (he insists to the Thoughts? people that he only wants a book deal, but we’re not fully convinced) or to explore the type of carnal pleasures that are far out of character for him (the film’s funniest and most dramatically potent scene, and therefore its best). 

What Cage can’t do, and that Borgli struggles to achieve, is a lucid central idea, a command-center brain for the many narrative neurons firing here. Some whittling and carving and clearing away of thematic brush reveals, perhaps, frustration with the rampant illogic of the human species’ collective functionality. Paul doesn’t consciously do anything to warrant his fame and folly, and he finds himself soaking up the adoration one moment and painfully absorbing the hate the next – it’s a thoroughly human impulse to enjoy good fortune no matter how it comes, and to lament it when it leaves. I found myself frustrated with not just the actions of humanity in response to Paul’s situation, but also the way he handles and reacts to those actions. He’s a man of science who refuses to subscribe to anything religious or supernatural, and that’s to be admired – but he’s also a deeply flawed individual who ends up defying his own internal logic for petty egotistical reasons that he sometimes doesn’t seem to be aware of. 

The overall result is funny, because it’s Cage manifesting the neurosis; if it was a different actor, we might want to throttle the guy for making poor decisions. Everything can always get worse, and it absolutely does for Paul, whose life falls apart, to no fault of his own. Except it kind of is his fault, because he’s not quite the rock-solid dead-boring average-median family man that he thinks he is. Cage digs into the character’s darker psychological corners to find his haplessness and render it comic. There’s a lot going on in the performance, and it can be riveting on a number of levels. But I was left with the nagging feeling that Dream Scenario could’ve and should’ve been more than it is, with a conclusion that matches Cage’s complexity and gusto.

Our Call: There’s lots to love about the ambitious Dream Scenario, so STREAM IT and let the debate about where it fits among Cage’s best performances begin, and thrive. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.