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Dream Corp is unlike anything on Adult Swim, which is saying a lot. The show tries to do a lot in 11 minutes, although it's billed as a comedy first. It can have a lot of fun with characters during their animated 'dream therapy', i.e. watching a conservative old lady let loose and give the bird to her family members. The comedy during live-action sequences isn't as impressive: save for secretary Joey who is hilarious by nature, the staff members don't make memorable characters.
However the meat of the show is psychedelic and nightmarish. The rotoscoped animation is great, rotoscoping is a really under-appreciated technique. Plus the live-action set has great lighting and feels very unique. And on top of all this Dream Corp tries to express some of the patients' deeper issues. The problem is that these issues can be pretty ambiguous, and the abstract animation does little to help. When a patient is diagnosed effectively, the insane dream sequences make sense, it's rewarding, and it makes me want to re-watch the episode straight away. Other times it's just played for laughs, like how a woman is almost cured of OCD before being tranquilized from off- screen, which is obviously not rewarding.
Overall though I think the show is a winner. The rotating cast are all memorable, the structure of each episode is great and the mix of realism and absurd-ism works surprisingly well. If the show were half an hour it would make a bit more sense, but late-night TV isn't really supposed to make sense.
score 8/10
crashmatilda 28 November 2016
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3594250/ |
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25-10-2020 20:22:02