Arizona Dream DVD Review

Arizona Dream

Available on DVD on 03/16/10
Running time 119 minutes

On sale in the Warner Archive now for $19.95

Johnny Depp is so hot on the big screen today that I asked to review one of his earlier releases, Arizona Dream. It begins with a dream of eskimoo and halibut in an igloo. It also ends in a dream possibly representing reincarnation. A cat with her newborn kittens is not the end but the beginning.

Some describe this as comic fantasy. I think not. It deserves its R rating for implicit sex and harsh graphic violence. Axel Blackmar comes to age with older woman Elaine (Faye Dunaway). Then the charms of her step-daughter Grace (Lili Taylor) pull him in. Uncle Leo (Jerry Lewis) intervenes and puts his own life in peril. Cousin Paul (Vincent Gallo) helplessly stands by.

Death and suicide loom. Flying machines soar only to crash. Turtles held captive are set free. This depiction of destroyed dreams is dark. The Arizona desert is a wasteland. Symbols abound. I like movies to escape the world’s sturm und drang. To me Arizona Dreams was not funny; it was tragic. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give it a 3.

Here’s the synopsis.

Academy Award-nominee Johnny Depp (“Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Blow”), Academy Award-winner Faye Dunaway (“Network,” “Chinatown”), and the legendary Jerry Lewis (“The King of Comedy,” “Cinderfella”), headline this offbeat psychodrama about a group of people drawn together in a desert town. Fleeing personal problems to pursue their dreams, they come to learn something about themselves and their relationships with the others around them. The New York Times calls this quirky film “enjoyably adrift, a wildly off-the-wall reverie.” Co-starring supermodel Paulina Porizkova (“Her Alibi,” “Anna”) and Lili Taylor (TV’s “Six Feet Under,” “High Fidelity”).

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