The Dream Team

A well-put together team performance, with enough in-jokes and self-effacement to steer clear of any detours into bad taste. Read full review

Writers Jon Connelly and David Loucka have fashioned a script that works largely because of the efforts of the four capable and credible actors who comprise The Dream Team: Christopher LLoyd, Stephen Furst, Peter Boyle, and Michael Keaton. Read full review

The Dream Team is a hokey comedy that basically reduces mental illness to a grab bag of quirky schtick. Yet with a quartet of gifted comic actors having a field day playing loonies on the loose in Manhattan, much of that schtick is awfully funny. Read full review

The Dream Team is essentially a formula picture filled with missed opportunities. The fact that it has several passages that really work, and that the actors create characters we can care about, only underlines the bankruptcy of its imagination. Read full review

There's nothing dreadfully wrong with The Dream Team, Howard Zieff's new comedy, except that it's not funny too much of the time. On those occasions when it is funny, the humor less often prompts laughter than mute appreciation of the talents of the principal performers - Michael Keaton, Christopher Lloyd and Peter Boyle. Read full review

So clearly derived from the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest that you might begin to wonder when Jack Nicholson will show up. The Dream Team isn't unusual, but it's funnier than, say, Twins or Fletch Lives. It can't really hit any classic highs, perhaps because it regards rebellion as cute and paranoia as a running gag. The jokes, to stick, need grittier, sawtooth edges. Read full review

It's a baffling, unconvincing experience, though it has a few moments of mild charm. Read full review

Dream Team might strike some viewers as insensitive, particularly after the care that was accorded persons with psychological disorders in Rain Man. But crass fun is a major component in Dream Team's tasteless charm. In fact, what this movie needs is less taste and lower regard for standard plot formulas. [07 Apr 1989, p.6]