Dream Scenario (2023)

Director: Kristoffer Borgli

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Nicholson, Michael Cera, Tim Meadows, Dylan Gelula

What it is about: A boring professor who leads a boring life starts appearing in almost everyone's dreams and becomes an instant worldwide celebrity.

Spoiler-free review: Surreal movies are too rare, and that's a shame. The cinema medium is perfect for surrealism, especially nowadays with the capabilities of CGI. Visually, the movie is nothing too special (I mean, there's barely any CGI), but it's just weird enough to be quite unsettling at times, in a good way. You may find the movie classified as a comedy or a horror movie. It truly is both. It starts like many movies where the main character is a university professor, but the ridiculousness of the unfolding situation soon turns it into a comedy. Eventually, it takes a dark turn, but it manages to remain comedic because the absurdity never goes away. In other words, it's not your typical Hollywood comedy or horror movie, and it's the absurdity and surrealism that encompass the plot that make it both funny and horrific, as well as worth watching.
The film also offers an interesting take on "viral celebrity," though this never becomes the main theme.

I like: Beyond the surreal and absurd atmosphere I previously mentioned, the best part of the movie is Nicolas Cage himself. He gives one of his best performances; you truly forget that it's Nicolas Cage and not a boring and often embarrassing professor who bears a vague resemblance to him.

I don't like: I wish the movie wasn't afraid to push the limits of the situations it creates a bit more. Also, the last act is somewhat messy, with many ideas colliding, but none of them are exploited or resolved in a satisfying way. It's as if the writer/director didn't know how to end the story and decided to cram all his remaining ideas into the last 20 minutes. It's a common beginner mistake. It's the director's third movie, but his first "big" movie (the first two were small Norwegian movies, if I'm correct). Maybe the film would have worked better as a miniseries of just a few episodes. I'm not sure.

In conclusion, despite its imperfections, I highly recommend watching it. The vast majority of the film is nearly a masterpiece, and Nicolas Cage deserves an Oscar for his role (he received several nominations and won several awards for it, but no Oscar).