Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dreamin’ Wild’ on Hulu, A Contemplative Music Biopic About Big Ambitions, Harsh Realities, And The Promise of Family  

There are dreams full of dreams in Dreamin’ Wild (Hulu), writer, director, and producer Bill Pohlad’s tender film about real-life musician brothers Donnie and Joe Emerson, whose lone self-released 1979 album inspired collectors and triggered interest thirty years after their dreams had long since become way less wild. As Donnie and Joe engage with this unexpected new interest, it dredges up old feelings about why their music didn’t click the first time around, and how they’ve lived their lives since. An official selection of the 2022 Venice International Film Festival, Dreamin’ Wild stars Casey Affleck and Walton Goggins as the Emerson brothers alongside Beau Bridges, Zooey Deschanel, Chris Messina, Noah Jupe, and Jack Dylan Grazer.   

DREAMIN’ WILD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: In the late 1970s, under a blanket of stars in the middle of the night, the quiet farmland of Fruitland, Washington came alive with the magic sounds of teenage abandon, pop melody, and inspired bits of rock and funk. Joe (Goggins) just played drums on those songs, he says later. It was Donnie (Affleck) who had the true talent. At just 15, he sang, played guitar and piano, wrote all the material, recorded it in the studio their father built by hand, and manifested his gifts with the Emerson Brothers and Dreamin’ Wild. And years later, it’s Donnie (Affleck) who ekes out a living as a gigging musician and owner of a recording studio alongside his wife Nancy (Deschanel), while Joe works as a welder on what remains of the rural acreage where their farmer father Don Sr. (Bridges) and mother Salina (Barbara Deering) raised them.

“If you don’t sleep, you don’t dream,” Donnie tells his young son. “You gotta dream.” But nowadays, the reality of his musical dream is playing wedding band Hall & Oates covers with Nancy. That changes with an out-of-nowhere phone call from Matt Sullivan (Messina), owner of the reissue imprint Light in the Attic Records. It’s 2011, and the collector community has spurred internet buzz for Dreamin’ Wild as a kind of forgotten classic of the private press. (In the film, Matt gushes over the album’s 8.0 review on Pitchfork, which called it “landlocked yacht rock.”) The Emersons, not trending topic savvy, are surprised to learn of the buzzy attention. But they agree to a reissue, enjoy a little juice in the form of royalty checks, and agree to play a reunion show during a LITA label showcase in Seattle. At long last, this could be the chance Donnie always yearned for. But Joe still can’t keep time the way he’d like.      

In flashbacks, Dreamin’ Wild also introduces Noah Jupe and Jack Dylan Grazer as teenage versions of Donnie and Joe, whose dreams of rock stardom are a mixture of precocious and legitimate, at least in the sense of Donnie’s obvious talent. And Don Sr. is invested, taking out second mortgages to build for his sons a practice space and studio complete with soundboard and 8-track recording equipment. Donnie and Joe play high school dances, and wild parties out in the sticks. But no one buys the vinyl they press, Donnie’s efforts at a solo career falter, and Don’s health suffers as his farmland dwindles. On this backdrop of flickering memory, regrets, and frustrated brotherly relationships, Donnie and Joe work to hone their set for their big comeback, encouraged by Nancy and their parents. But Donnie can’t outrun his feelings. Where he was once overlooked, now there is interest. But it’s interest in a version of himself he’s shut away for too long, and the current version of himself will have to reckon with old, seemingly dead dreams suddenly rekindled.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Dreamin’ Wild director Bill Pohlad also made Love & Mercy, the acclaimed 2014 biographical drama that starred John Cusack and Paul Dano as older and younger versions of Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson. And while Beau Bridges is a talent in his own right, his presence here provides a spiritual link to Crazy Heart, another quietly harrowing, nontraditional music biopic that earned Beau’s brother Jeff Bridges Best Actor honors.    

Performance Worth Watching: Whenever Walton Goggins is in anything, there are going to be moments during his performance where you say, “Damn, Goggins is gonna Goggins.” And those exist in Dreamin’, too, alongside a cast that’s uniformly good. But the biggest standout might be Jack Dylan Grazer (the It movies, HBO’s We Are Who We Are) as the younger version of Goggins’ Joe Emerson.  

Memorable Dialogue: From the minute they learn of the newfound buzz surrounding Dreamin’, Donnie is uncomfortable with it. “You make an album when you’re 16 years old, and nobody likes it. Thirty years go by, and the New York Times wants to come out and talk to you.” 

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: There is a dissonance between Donnie Emerson’s present and his own past lives. What could have occurred if Dreamin’ Wild the album had sold the first time around? If his solo career had actually found flight, would that have alleviated the guilt and shame he feels over his father’s efforts to support his music industry dreams? And what about now, as Donnie and Nancy chase vestiges of music success while their recording studio stands empty? Casey Affleck spends quite a bit of Dreamin’ Wild the movie in Full Brood Mode, to the point that when the argument with Walton Goggins as Joe finally explodes, it was telegraphed like a song with more than one pre-chorus. But that isn’t meant as a slight. From the first few moments of Dreamin’, director Bill Pohlad establishes a mood that exists as much in memory as it does the stresses of the film’s present day. Donnie-penned songs like “Baby” and “Dream Full of Dreams” whisper in dusty corners of the boys’ barn building-turned-practice and recording space. Sometimes only surfacing in half-form, they offer a suggestion of the magic the songs hold, the same magic that proves elusive in the relationship between the brothers Emerson as adults. And to highlight this even further, Affleck even interacts occasionally with Jupe, as if the older Donnie stopped growing emotionally once the teenage Donnie didn’t fulfill the promise of his talent. The pace Dreamin’ Wild sets is quiet and contemplative. But that suits the material, and the performances within it, since so many of these characters long to return to a place where the promise of the past finds peace with the present. Because that would be a beat everyone could dance to.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Quiet and understated, Dreamin’ Wild is a drama that forgoes the usual music biopic story arc for a story more sensitive to the afterimages that last in our minds, sometimes for decades after the music has stopped.  

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.