Classic Movie Review: 'Dream Lover' Starring James Spader

Dream Lover (1994)

Directed by Nicholas Kazan

Written by Nicholas Kazan

Starring James Spader, Madchen Amick, Bess Armstrong, Larry Miller

Release Date May 6th, 1994

Published May 6th 2024

Okay, so hear me out, this is my secret plan. I saw this guy who is really handsome and rich and has his own business. So, what I am going to do is steal his money. Here's how I am going to do it, stay with me, it's complicated. So, I am waiting for him to finalize his divorce. Then, several weeks or perhaps months, after he's been on a bunch of dates with a bunch of women he's not interested in, I will meet him at this art opening that he's supposed to be attending.

At the art gallery, while he's talking to another woman he's not interested in, I will position myself behind him with a glass of wine. When he turns around, I will say he spilled wine all over me and then storm out without giving him my name. Then, the next day, I will follow him when he's grocery shopping and approach him. Then, he will follow me and ask me to dinner. I will let him take me to dinner but then, I won't tell him how to get in touch with me for another date.

My plan indicates that he will be so besotted with me that he will start stalking me, not knowing that I am already stalking him. Then, he will see me come home with another man and when that man leaves, he will find a way to find which speaker is connected to my apartment. And then I will let him come in and somehow, I will have just been in the shower, even though I was just answering my door to let him in my building. Then I will have sex with him after he jealously berates me for information about the guy who just left. I will say that guy's gay, so I save this guy's ego.

So, we have sex and then several months later of us dating and having sex, we will get married. And then, after we've been married for a few months, I will have a baby. And then, after we've been married a few years, I will have another baby. And then, a few months after that, I will start leaving obvious clues about having an affair. And when he gets super-jealous and punches me in the face, I won't have him arrested, I will have him committed and once he's deemed crazy, boom, divorce, I take his money and the kids.

What do you think? Don't worry about the hitting thing, he will punch me in the face and slap me and I will still put on makeup to fool the doctors that I was abused. I mean, I will have been abused but I am crazy, so I have to make it look like I am lying for no good reason. Then it will only confuse my husband and father of my children even more. Because I am crazy. It's a foolproof plan, it can't fail unless he somehow tricks me into going to see him at the asylum on the ruse that he's figured out my dastardly scheme and then chokes me to death using the excuse that he's crazy as cover so he can get out of the hospital when he recovers. But really, what are the chances of that happening right?

That mulit-paragraph plot is the actual plot of the 1994 movie Dream Lover, from the perspective of Madchen Amick's crazy wife character Lena. It's my interpretation of her plan and it hopefully illustrates just how desperately convoluted this plot is. Written and directed by Nicholas Kazan, the character of Lena marries and has kids and builds a perfect upper class New York life with Ray Reardon, played by James Spader, all so that after several years of wedded bliss, she can blow up the whole thing to steal his money. All part of a plot that she hatched before they ever met.

It reads and plays like fan fiction written by a divorced dad for his next Men's Rights Group meeting. It's shallow and pathetic wish fulfillment. It's a guy saying 'there was nothing wrong with me, the man, this woman was plotting against me the whole time. I had every right to kill her.' The movie starts by introducing Spader's Ray completing his divorce agreement and talking to his now ex-wife who says that she still loves him but because he physically assaulted her, she had to divorce him. That's how we meet the protagonist of this film.

Well, that's not the first scene actually, we actually begin in a dream sequence. The movie is called Dream Lover because Ray has these recurring dreams in which he is at a carnival and a wacky clown is asking him about his personal life. Over the course of the dreams we see a tent show called "Dream Girl." Though he is warned not to go in there, during a dream after he is married and a dad, he goes in anyway. Near the end of the movie, the dream girl is revealed to not be his wife, and the mother of his children, it's his previous ex-wife who divorced him for assaulting her. This would be tragic if we had any sympathy for Ray but, again, she divorced him because he assaulted her.

Are Ray's dreams trying to warn him about his current wife and her scheme? No, not really. They just sort of happen now and again and add almost nothing to the movie. You could remove the dream sequences entirely and you would not effect the plot of Dream Lover at all. That's in part due to sloppy direction and screenwriting but it's also due to the plot of the movie being entirely insane. Someone wanted to turn their bitter divorce into a hero's journey movie in which he gets to murder his villainous wife and get away with it. And a group of Hollywood executives heard that pitch and said, yes, make that a movie.

Dream Lover is the subject of an unhinged new episode of the I Hate Critics 1994 Podcast, a spinoff of the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast. Each week, myself and my co-hosts, Gen Z'er M.J and Gen X'Er Amy, watch a movie released 30 years ago that weekend and use it as an excuse to examine how movies and cultures have changed in just the past 30 years. It's been a fun and strange journey filled wit a lot of movies, like Dream Lover, that have not aged well. You can hear the I Hate Critics 1994 Podcast on the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast feed, wherever you listen to podcasts.

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