What Dreams May Come
Polygram Filmed Entertainment | Release Date: October 2, 1998 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
44
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 25 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
15
Negative:
6
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
So breathtaking, so beautiful, so bold in its imagination, that it's a surprise at the end to find it doesn't finally deliver. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
What Dreams May Come has the sensibilities of an art film placed into a big-budget feature with an A-list cast. Read full review
70
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
Despite its numerous missteps and miscalculations, What Dreams May Come is often a powerful, affecting piece of filmmaking. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Too bad. What dreams may come, indeed, when such enticing foreplay ends with a consummation devoutly to be missed. Read full review
60
The New York TimesStephen Holden
What Dreams May Come, based on a novel by Richard Matheson and directed by Vincent Ward, the New Zealand filmmaker noted for his skill at creating lavish cinematic dreamscapes, represents the uncomfortable collision of two ideas about filmmaking, one commercial, the other eccentrically, ambitiously dreamy. Read full review
60
VarietyTodd McCarthy
A heaping serving of metaphysical gobbledygook wrapped in a physically striking package. Read full review
60
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
There are a number of surprises in the idiosyncratic film, and one of its pleasures is the oblique and unchronological way in which Ward peels away the layers of the story, flashing backward and forward in time and jumping between Earth and the Beyond, separating his scenes with blindingly blank, white-out screens. Read full review
60
EmpireKim Newman
This is one of those failures that has so many near-great things that it almost gets by on guts. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
So diaphanous it practically dissolves as you watch it. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Like most dreams revisited with eyes wide open, this one's content dissolves into a transparent puddle of inchoate thoughts and predictable iconography. Read full review
50
Film ThreatChris Gore
What's so disappointing is that the film had so much potential as a concept. The story slowly degenerates into a plodding, sappy bore. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleBob Graham
Astonishing visualizations of the afterlife are coupled with a drawn-out allegory about communication between the living and the dead that becomes something of a trial to sit through. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
This visually inventive fantasy paints the wide screen with colorful effects, but its psychological and spiritual ideas rarely rise above "new age" fuzziness. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Watching it is like being in a room with a couple locked in a torrid embrace. It might be fun for them, but what's in it for everyone else? Read full review
50
SlateDavid Edelstein
Weds an epic, sometimes visionary, depiction of the afterlife to a script and story with fewer psychological layers than the average Hallmark card. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderLisa Alspector
An effects vehicle disguised as a metaphysical meditation (or a metaphysical meditation disguised as an effects vehicle?), this strikingly unimaginative 1998 movie contains visuals that can barely assert their niftiness amid the vacuous themes. Read full review
40
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
The insidious influence of too much therapy permeates this misguided and very long picture. Read full review
40
Village VoiceDennis Lim
A bottomless trough of mystic swill, is too confused to even fulfill the paradigm's most basic requirements. Read full review
40
NewsweekJeff Giles
A noble but supernaturally dull movie. Read full review
30
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Directed by Vincent ("A Map of the Human Heart") Ward, who is either a genius or a crackpot, and derived from a long-ago novel by Richard Matheson, the film is overproduced and underpopulated, with either characters or ideas. Read full review
30
SalonLaura Miller
By the movie's numbingly predictable end, the notion of a visually unleashed cinema seems like a monstrous mistake -- we've handed over the atom bomb to the Teletubbies! Read full review
30
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
What a letdown that Vincent Ward, who gave us a fabulous gift with Map of the Hu-man Heart, has made this big old tub of schmaltz. Read full review
30
The New YorkerBruce Diones
Though director Vincent Ward used his special-effects budget well -- there are some stunning impressionistic moments -- the film is as gooey and sticky as an overcooked marshmallow. Read full review
25
Rolling StonePeter Travers
How can a film look so radiant and be so hollow? Read full review
25
San Francisco ExaminerDavid Armstrong
A scary example of bad movies happening to good people. Read full review
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