Dreamland DVD Review

Dreamland makes use of its setting, a trailer park in the heart of New Mexico. This photographic setting is also secluded from the rest of the world, making a cliché and tired plot available. It is beautiful and romantic in the New Mexico desert, but there is no solid ground for the script to stand on. It is a fantasy script filled with perfect moments and passionate conclusions, with so little truth in any of it that it begins to feel written by a high school girl with her first crush.

Audrey (Agnes Bruckner) lives with her father in a trailer park in New Mexico named Dreamland. Her father can’t leave the trailer park without having panic attacks since Audrey’s mother died, and her best friend is physically sick. Both rely on Audrey for their day-to-day life. When a young neighbor moves in with his parents both girls develop a crush on him. Because her friend is sick, Audrey pushes the two of them together, but continues to pine long afterwards.

Agnes Bruckner does an admirable job of keeping the material interesting, even when it is often absurd. The relationship between Audrey and her father (John Corbett) is the most engaging part of the film because the relationship feels real and heartfelt. All of the relationship love triangle with the basketball player named Mookie is pathetically cheesy, although some of this can be blamed on casting. It is bad enough to have your male lead named Mookie, but to have him played by Justin Long just makes it even more absurd.

The world of romantic disillusionment that these characters live in is usually only seen in soap operas and films directed at pre-pubescent teens who are still ignorant to the larger truths in life. Each character in the film seems to believe that if you fall in love there is no curing the pain if that love is lost. Even the adults pine for lost love, becoming a recluse rather than overcome the loss, which sets a wonderful example for the teens. Everything is done with such dramatic flare, almost imitating the large dramatic moments which are supposed to be in movies. Characters are more likely to seen drawing a heart in the dirt and freeing thousands of bees to sting them while they stand in the heart rather than explain their feelings. Melodrama rules in this insignificant and cliché film. There is also no way of escaping love, which is a common theme in nearly any romantic film, but even this is done with such weighty melodrama that there is no joy in the joining of the romantic leads.