The new big-screen soap opera I'll See You in My Dreams from director Brett Haley (co-written by Haley and Marc Basch) is 95 mostly inoffensive minutes long (rated PG-13 for sexual material, drug use and brief strong language). Its message is that life for a widow in sunbelt America is a pretty empty affair without an afternoon bridge game with three loyal girlfriends �" in this case, three scene-stealing pros: June Squibb, Rhea Perlman, and Mary Kay Place, a loyal pet (this category subdivides into "dog people" vs. "cat people"). Also a big lug with a block-long cigar �" here, Sam Elliott, a fine B-movie character actor whom some will recall from such cable-TV fillers as The Hi-Low Country, Murder in Texas, Gone to Texas, The Quick and the Dead, Tombstone �" in other words, male soap operas, usually with bigger names and larger talents dropping by for a quick payday, like Gene Hackman or Leo DiCaprio.
Not surprisingly in America, what happens to the dog trumps the human characters nine ways to Sunday. I'll See You in My Dreams ignites when 20-years-a-widow Carol (Blythe Danner) loses her dog in the first act, strikes up an oddly comfortable friendship with her much younger pool guy (Martin Starr), stumbles across the white-haired dude with the cigar and a nice big fishing boat (Elliott), and all it costs her is some well-meaning hectoring from her grown daughter, who lives in another city (Malin Akerman).
Dreams is that Hollywood staple so easy to poke fun at that has furnished generations of writers with cigars, pools and East Coast schools for the kids since movies learned to talk. Alfred Hitchcock (Suspicion) and Billy Wilder (Witness for the Prosecution) could practically write these tales in their sleep. It helped to spice up the stew to toss in a well-timed murder, and it was ever so more delicious to set the whole thing in London with the boys from New Scotland Yard, climaxing with a juicy trial at the Old Bailey as the cigar-smoking barrister (Charles Laughton) nails down his case with a trumped-up third-act surprise from a flashy dame with a scar (Marlene Dietrich). "Want to kiss me, Ducky?"
Frankly, the only reason to catch Dreams before it hits the Hallmark Channel is the low-key spark from Danner, whom I recall most fondly as being married to an impossibly loud if charming blowhard (Robert Duvall) in the Lewis John Carlino male weepie The Great Santini. Santini took an extra 20 minutes to cover the waterfront, from the Old South, the New South, high school basketball, rude bathroom pranks at the expense of cute GIs, to Danner getting to tell her hot teenage son why he shouldn't kill the old man just yet.
I'll See You in My Dreams could have been oh so much more fun if its makers could have found another juicy Pat Conroy novel to spin it off, but I guess military-base America is less of a hoot these days. At least Dreams doesn't screw up the scenes with the mutts or the cigars. That much is still sacred.