I like to cheer for the little guys (pun intended) so when I saw that Peter Dinklage was involved in a comdey/drama film I loaded it up to see what else he can do other than GoT and silly comedies with his pals. I'm sure it isn't easy to find a lot of work as a little person or whatever the PC term is today for midgets so for him to go for a role like this is pretty fantastic.
His acting is good so the reason why this film didn't do well and gets mixed reviews from critics isn't his fault. The fault lies in the screenplay that leaves us wondering what the hell happened particularly in the last 30 minutes of the film where it seems as though the director didn't have enough footage to fully tell the story.
As it turns out there are quite a few films that are called "American Dreamer" but as far as I can tell this is not a remake of any of those and according to the wiki the entire movie is based on a segment from a radio show.
Dinklage plays the role of Dr. Phil Loder who is a professor of economics at a minor university. He enjoys his work and is pretty good at it but since he can't seem to find any sort of upward mobility he struggles with the fact that he doesn't have a nest egg in the form of a house. This is a pretty great representation of the times that we live in now though seeing as how the story is about a friggin university professor with a Ph.D. that can't seem to manage to put together enough money to purchase a house.
He looks online at real estate offerings and is guided by his real-estate agent friend "Dell" who is played by an extremely botoxed-up Matt Dillon. One day while eating lunch he stumbles upon a classified ad that talks about an absolutely massive estate that will be sold for far less than the house is worth provided that the person lives there with the widow until she dies. Upon meeting the widow Astrid (played by Shirley MacLaine) he is convinced that the "old bird" doesn't have much time left so he sells everything he owns including his car in order to move in.
He is now restricted to a scooter for transport and at least at first he starts to lament the fact that he put all of his money and possessions into this deal because the "old coot" just refuses to die.
I think quite predictably the two of them end up forming a bond with one another and he later changes his mind about wanting her to die.
This isn't a love story or anything weird like that, but it is just fantastic acting by the two main stars that unfortunately included a very poorly written screenplay. There are parts of the film that drag on for far too long whereas the conclusion of the film happens so quickly that I had to go back about 10 minutes to try to figure out what the hell I missed. In one minute things are going like they have for the entire movie with slight deviations, and then 5 minutes later the movie is over in a very strange way that doesn't make any sense and was never talked about or even hinted at throughout the rest of the film. I suppose this was meant to be a shock ending but mostly it was just a stupid ending.
Should I watch it?
Honestly, there are worse things out there that you could watch and the incredibly acting on the part of Dinklage and MacLaine almost make up for the fact that the story is disjointed. I enjoyed it but feel as though it was just told in a sloppy manner almost as if the director was running over budget and just needed to wrap it up. I realize that filming doesn't happen linearly speaking but by the time it was over I was just like "huh?"
I think it can be worthwhile for many people but others are going to get bored especially if they are like me and could tell exactly where the film was going. I think this is the reason for the shock ending because otherwise this would have just been exactly like so many other films that have been made in the past. I would give this one 5/10
at the moment American Dreamer cannot be legally streamed anywhere. It can be rented or purchased on a wide variety of platforms including AppleTV+ and Amazon
