What Dreams May Come

Speaking of dropping acid, New Zealand's Vincent Ward has directed what may be the most sublimely ridiculous movie in the history of Hollywood. Based on a novel by Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come features Robin Williams and Annabella Sciorra as a husband and wife who lose first their children and then each other in auto accidents. Alas, Williams gets stuck in heaven, Sciorra in hell--both destinations realized by Ward and his production team in a moving-picture exhibition of (how to describe it?) dorm-room poster art. Like a painting left out in the rain, the heavenly imagery in What Dreams May Come keeps turning into goo, whereas the hellish imagery is straight out of Hieronymus Bosch. As bizarre as the whole thing is, it might have worked if Ward didn't keep tugging at our heartstrings--tugging with a tugboat.