In a career chockablock with head cases, weirdoes, volatile inscrutables, cracked-mirror self-parodies, and other assorted voyagers along the far reaches of human behavior, the surrealist black comedy Dream Scenario deals Nicolas Cage the last challenge he has yet to conquer: portraying the most normal man in the world.
People generally look right through latter-day mister cellophane Paul Matthews, a professor of zoology losing the war for his undergrads’ attention with corny jokes and geeky enthusiasm for the evolutionary marvel of zebra stripes. At home, his daughters occasionally acknowledge his existence without looking up from their phones, and his wife (Julianne Nicholson, in her second role of the year as a woman named Janet consistently disappointed by the deficiencies of the opposite sex) affectionately teases him for his awkward verbosity. There’s nothing remarkable about this garden-variety schlemiel – until, following the approximate trajectory of James Corden, he starts to make inexplicable cameos in the brains of perfect strangers and learns how rapidly celebrity can harden into public contempt.
