DUNE (1984) **1/2 Sci-fi soap opera for the Dungeons & Dragons set. She: Wow, it must be a really thick book. Me: Yeah, but not as thick as its readers. My assessment is more witty than accurate, but the poetic truth within may point to something that could only elude literal analysis. I have to say that yeah I enjoyed it, but I'm pretty sure that I was laughing way more than I was supposed to. I mean, it's symptomatic of the entire thing that whenever things really get going they let Toto cut loose, and their conception of a dangerous and mysterious evil guy is Sting. Lots of ideas, though (I assume mostly from Frank Herbert's novel but it's always possible that David Lynch thought it all up himself-no, I'm unlikely to read the book to find out), and when there are that many ideas there are bound to be.almost always will be some good ones. I mean, I don't have any difficulty understanding how this attained cult status, and how so many people just love it. It's a very cool looking film. There are many memorable (no doubt for some more than others) characters, and there's nothing.not much, mainly.paint-by-numbers about the approach. The problem is that it too often veers into an unproductive and unintentional absurdity of some form or another, and that by the climactic scenes it settles somewhere on the pathetic end of the silly spectrum. Only Sting and Brad Dourif seem to have enough of a sense of this to take advantage of it and work it as a virtue. Kyle MacLachlan-who's supposed to be megatough saviour of the universe-never gets past being a particularly GQ representation of the dumb little kid on the playground with nothing to contribute other than distracting young ladies of a particularly vacuous stripe. And that isn't even the part that gives the film Lynch's trademark sense of nausea-induction! This might have worked really well as a rock musical, if they'd mixed in David Bowie and Blondie.
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