WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

• Starring Robin Williams, Annabella Sciorra and Cuba Gooding Jr.
• Directed by Vincent Ward
• Rated PG-13, with violence and nightmarish imagery; running time 113 minutes
• With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a 6

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(Oct. 2, 1998) -- Chris and Annie Nielsen believe their love is eternal. They consider themselves soul mates and can't imagine life without each other.

But their love is sorely tested when their two children are killed in a car crash.

And that's just the beginning. A few years later, they must face the ultimate challenge: One of them dies.

Can their love span heaven and hell?

That's the deep, dark metaphysical mystery explored in What Dreams May Come, a fascinating but flawed romantic fantasy with Robin Williams and Annabella Sciorra.

The result is visually breathtaking and intellectually intriguing. After all, who hasn't tried to envision the hereafter?

But the film is awfully gloomy. The title comes from Shakespeare's musings on death from Hamlet -- and as heavy movies go, this is a purebred pachyderm.

Oddly, despite all the death and despair, What Dreams May Come seldom is emotionally involving. It's clearly designed to open floodgates, yet in the theater rows around me, most eyes remained dry.

That said, the film is a visual feast. As Chris (Williams) tours heaven with an angel (Cuba Gooding Jr.), he encounters the world he's created in his mind from his favorite works of art.

Thanks to advanced computer graphics, it's a virtual-reality dream world. Actors walk, fly, fall and float across vibrant landscapes of their own imagining.

This heaven offers spectacular color and romantic vistas -- and even, in one amazing sequence, still-wet paint.

And when Chris journeys to hell to search for his love, he encounters equally intriguing (though horrific) images of despairing souls who've lost all sense of identity and self-worth.

In the film's most astonishing scene, Chris stumbles across a vast, dingy field of mud, jammed with just the heads of lost souls. As he walks nervously across these bizarre "cobblestones," the heads speak an endless litany of excuses for their failings.

We see a serious Robin Williams here, not the overly wired, rubber-faced variety. But he and Sciorra may be a bit too earnest. A little levity might have helped.

Director Vincent Ward and screenwriter Ron Bass spent a lot of time creating heaven and hell. Too much. They should have paid more attention to the earthbound love story that sets this fable in motion.