Entertaining. Mostly: Dream Scenario reviewed

Dream Scenario is a high-concept dark comedy about celebrity and cancel culture. It stars our old pal Nicolas Cage who, blame it on what you will – tax bills, divorce bills, the price of butter – has appeared in some abominable dreck down the years but has never turned in a boring performance. Mad, yes. Reckless, yes. Maximalist, always. But boring? Never. And he is wonderfully not-boring here. It’s certainly the most Nicolas Cage film since the last Nicolas Cage film, whenever that was. Plus it is entertaining. Mostly.

The film is directed by Kristoffer Borgli (Sick of Myself, also a satire on social-media fame) and stars Cage as Paul Matthews even if, when I first glanced at the poster, I thought it starred Paul Giamatti. But no, it’s Cage, rocking the latter-stages-of-male-pattern-baldness look. (The other thing you can’t say about our old pal is that he lacks commitment.) Interestingly, Matthews is a boring man. ‘Not memorable,’ is how someone describes him. He is a professor of evolutionary biology who puts his students to sleep and wears half-zip jumpers, and whose career, through no fault of his own, has stalled. He yearns to publish a book on his specialist subject – swarm behaviour; or ‘ant-elligence’ as he calls it – but is too chronically passive to actually research and write it even though he pines for recognition. (Be careful what you wish for.)

He is all ego and no action, yet does, somewhat inexplicably, have a lovely, supportive wife (Julianne Nicholson). Then something weird happens. This being a Nic Cage film, there would have to be weirdness, and it’s this: people start to do a double take at Matthews on the street. Why? He’s turning up in their dreams.