Cult filmmakers Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn have made a career out of genre homages without ever losing touch with their own distinct aesthetic. Their 2015 feature “L for Leisure” directly riffed on the ’90s indie film culture and 2018’s “Two Plains and a Fancy” offered a deconstructed take on the Western genre — but no matter what genre they take on, trademarks like 16mm film and dreamy synth scores mark every project as distinctly theirs.
Their latest feature, “Dream Team,” is no exception. A send-up of basic cable softcore thrillers like “Silk Stalkings,” the film presents six episodes of a fictional TV show that moves with the urgency of an imaginary writers room that knew it had 27 episodes to fill. Storylines seem to come and go at their own leisure as the “show” alternates between solving crimes, alluding to sexiness that we never quite see, and fixating on ambient aquatic imagery. Neither a true satire nor a sincere love letter, “Dream Team” nevertheless succeeds at recreating the kind of mediocrity that inspired it. Unfortunately, the bulk of its appeal lies in its retro vibes that are far better suited to late night channel surfing than focused theatrical viewing.
“Dream Team” follows the adventures of No St. Aubergine (Esther Garrel) and Chase National (Alex Zhang Hungtai), two Interpol agents clearly designed to have sexual tension that carries over from week to week. Their work forces them to get up close and personal with some of the most dangerous criminals in the world — but, as they’re quick to point out, Interpol doesn’t have any authority to solve crimes. Their purpose is simply to facilitate communication between other police departments. The lack of formal jurisdiction lowers the stakes of their adventures, allowing them to devote more of their screen time to staring off at sunsets while looking attractive.
Their leisurely investigative work is supported by their administrative assistants K (Fariha Róisín) and Venice (Isabelle Barbier), two college students who split their time between doing research for Interpol and studying interpretive dance. There’s also an inexplicably invisible man named Hard Karl in the mix. But when Interpol is asked to look into the suspicious circumstances surrounding a coral dealer’s death, this crack team finds themselves in over their heads when it becomes clear that all of the world’s coral reefs could be communicating via telepathy.
Or something like that. Kalman and Horn appear to be so disinterested in the nuances of their plot that it’s hard to expect anyone watching to string everything together. “Dream Team” is much more of an exercise in form than story, and the filmmakers almost seem determined to recreate the dissociative effects of zoning out to endless episodes of mediocre cable TV in the middle of the night. The real artistic product might not be the movie itself, but the places that your mind takes you as it lulls you into a trance.
Still, none of that intentionality stops the gag from becoming grating very quickly. Lowbrow ’90s television has been an endless subject of smart parody, from the “Pink Opaque” scenes in Jane Schoenbrun’s (who executive produces “Dream Team”) “I Saw the TV Glow” to a solid 70% of early Adult Swim programming. The question, then, becomes whether “Dream Team” brings anything new to the table to justify its existence in a niche of films about a niche era of TV. The film never quite clears that bar, as its attempts at satire are seldom bold enough to overcome the thin story and stilted acting, even if its commitment to recreating the USA Network of 1997 yields some impressive craftsmanship.
In some ways, “Dream Team” feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. By leaning into its low effort, too-cool-to-care aesthetic, it subliminally tells audiences that anyone offering substantial criticisms is just a square who didn’t get it. If the Interpol cops at the center of a coral conspiracy don’t even care about solving crimes, why should film critics spend an iota of time analyzing their motivations? It’s a framing device that may well resonate with Kalman and Horn’s diehard fans, but anyone else can find better uses of their time.
Grade: C
A Yellow Veil Pictures release, “Dream Team” is now playing in select theaters.
