Thursday Movie Picks: Dream Sequences

 

For the 45th week of 2021 as part of Wandering Through the Shelves' Thursday Movie Picks. We go into the subject of dream sequences as they are moments in film that either played for laughs or to bring misery for someone. Here are my three picks:

1. Dumb and Dumber

Remember when the Farrelly Brothers used to be funny and made watchable films? Yeah, that was a long time ago and they hadn’t done anything noteworthy in 20 years as this is a reminder of what they were then in a film that is about two stupid guys going on a road trip to return a briefcase. There, one of them imagines about fulfilling his duty in a dream sequence where he gets the girl, become part of her social circle, and getting to have sex with her. That is the dream. Plus, what straight man back in the 1990s wouldn’t want to see if Lauren Holly was wearing underwear or not?

2. Happy Gilmore

The golfer comedy about a wannabe hockey player who becomes a golfer so he can save his grandmother’s house is one of the finest comedies of the 1990s. Yet, the titular character played by Adam Sandler is an emotional mess as he turns to his mentor Chubbs to help with his short game. What Happy needed was to go to his happy place to defeat the evil veteran Shooter McGavin for the gold jacket but following an incident from a crazy man. Happy struggles as he tries to go to his happy place in a dream sequence only for it to become a nightmare because of Shooter. It is a hilarious moment where Christopher McDonald really gets to own the moment making Shooter one of cinema’s greatest villains.

3. The Big Lebowski

The Coen Brothers’ 1998 low-brow masterpiece is really about two things. A dude and his rug. Two assholes who mistake him for another asshole by pissing on his rug that really tied the room together and then the rug gets stolen. All the Dude ever wanted was his rug back and thus leads to one of the greatest dream sequences in film all to the tune of the First Edition’s Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) where the Dude is getting new bowling shoes and teaching the woman of his dreams how to bowl. It all then becomes a nightmare involving a bunch of nihilists and all sorts of crazy shit. What a film and what a hell of a dream sequence. Man, fuck Orange County and fuck the Eagles. Not the Philadephia Eagles. The Eagles, fuck ‘em.

© thevoid99 2021