Film review by Kevin Patterson
DREAM WITH THE FISHES Rating: *** (out of four) R, 1997 Director: Finn Taylor Story: Jeffrey Young & Finn Taylor Screenplay: Finn Taylor Producers: David Arquette & Jeffrey Young
DREAM WITH THE FISHES does not waste much time in planting itself firmly in some pretty strange territory. It begins with Terry (David Arquette), a neurotic voyeur, spying on Nick and Liz, the couple in an apartment across from his. Nick is ignoring Liz, and when he heads out for the evening, Terry goes to a liquor store, buys himself a bottle of booze, and prepares to jump off the nearest bridge. He's interrupted by Nick, who stops by to ask him for the time, then convinces him that jumping off a bridge is a bad method of suicide, and finally offers to trade a bottle of sleeping pills for Terry's wristwatch. Unbeknownst to Terry, Nick has given him vitamins instead. When Terry realizes what's happened, he follows Nick again, this time to read him off and get his watch back, only to find that Nick is in the hospital, undergoing treatment for a terminal disease that will kill him in another month.
Thus begins one of the weirdest setups for a buddy movie that I can recall. The rest of the film is comparatively tame (but then again, what wouldn't be?): Nick decides he'd rather not spend his last moments in a hospital, and convinces Terry to help him escape so that the two of them can go on a sort of last-chance road trip. They proceed to have numerous little odd adventures, the most amusing of which involves Nick, high on LSD, deciding to steal a fish from a nearby aquarium and set it loose in the sea, before they run out of money and have nowhere to go but back to Nick's hometown. There we are introduced to Nick's dysfunctional family, as well as his old friends and a former girlfriend, while the perpetually timid Terry starts to come out of his shell as he becomes more comfortable with Nick's various acquaintances.
Both Nick and Terry live on fantasy rather than reality. For Nick, it is the fantasy of omnipotence: he's the kind of guy who thinks he's always right, that everyone would be a lot better off if they would just listen to him, and that then he could have all the fun he wants and not have to worry about the consequences. Nick's journey is not one of discovery but one of denial, as he spends most of the film pulling stunts rather than thinking about what his life has meant or resolving old conflicts. Terry's fantasy, on the other hand, is that of withdrawal: his immediate response to any uncomfortable situation is to remove himself from it. He prefers to live vicariously through others, as a voyeur, rather than to make a life for himself, and ultimately this fantasy has manifested itself through the suicide attempt.
Writer/director Finn Taylor has found himself in something of a Catch-22 here: he knows these characters and their shallow, fantasy-prone tendencies so well that the film itself risks becoming shallow and fantasy-prone. Terry learns to enjoy life and realizes he doesn't want to kill himself, but he owes most of his "discoveries" to Nick, who can't really be said to be any more functional than Terry aside from not being suicidal. It's a start, of course, but the events of DREAM WITH THE FISHES would really just be a small step in Terry's development as a more functional and satisfied person.
I am assuming that Taylor knows this and knows that his audience knows this and does not intend for people to walk away thinking all is well for Terry. Accordingly, I'd say DREAM WITH THE FISHES is a moderate success. It's a simple story, nothing monumental, but it's a story that is told with skill and consistency and stays true to itself and to its characters.
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