As the credits rolled I turned to my wife and said (in the immortal words of Mike LaFontaine), "Wha' happen'?"

The book by Stephen King upon which this notorious dud is based is pretty bad. King wrote it while recovering from a hideous accident (he was creamed by a minivan while walking down a country road), and the story is about what you'd expect from a writer whose brain is soaked in morphine: unfocused, too long, derivative, and pointless. However, it does have an endearing and believable portrait of four guys who have been best friends since they carried lunch boxes to school. And, perhaps best of all, it has shit weasels.

The movie's friends are played by personal fav Jason Lee (Beaver), Thomas Jane (Henry), Damian Lewis (Jonesy) and Timothy Olyphant (Pete). It is in the set-up of the friendship that the actors, voicing lines by director Lawrence Kasdan and screenwriter William Goldman, shine. When the guys go to a remote cabin in the Maine woods for their annual huntin' & drinkin' weekend, the movie is at its best: the guys cook, drink beer, shoot the shit. We like them. But of course, this is what Kasdan (The Big Chill, Grand Canyon) is best at. Then, while Henry and Pete are out stocking up on more brewskis (and being warned by the store owner of an approaching Nor'easter), Jonesy and Beav meet a flatulent deer hunter who apparently has been lost in the woods overnight. What they don't know, but will soon enough find out, is the hunter is hosting a toothy alien eel that is eating him alive and will birth itself through his anus. Enter the shit weasel.

After this, as in the book that inspired it, Dreamcatcher starts its rapid decent into awfulness. Suddenly this intimate, intelligent movie becomes large, loud, and dumb: Beav stupidly lets the trapped shit weasel out to chomp his balls; Morgan Freeman and his prosthetic eyebrows appear as a military commander in charge of a secret corps that has been fighting the aliens for 25 years; Jonesy comes face to face with another type of alien - a humanoid "grey" that explodes in a cloud of red dust and takes over his mind; Henry discovers that the cabin has been overrun with a red alien fungus and is home to a nest full of shit weasel eggs; a second shit weasel chomps Pete's balls; a miscast Tom Sizemore as Freeman's sensitive second-in-command leads helicopter gunships to the alien crash landing and decimates the seemingly peaceful creatures - and I haven't even gotten to Duddits, the magical retard who's actually an alien.

Say what?

I didn't understand the book at all. I don't think it's possible to understand King's morphine logic. But, just for fun, let's try:

1) the aliens arrive in a big space ship which appears to be metal but is actually made of red fungus;

2) they look like the stereotypical big-headed, waif-bodied humanoid greys;

3) they spread the red fungus like a plague, which may or may not lead to shit weasel impregnation;

4) the greys are actually seven foot tall shit weasels;

5) shit weasels lay eggs which almost instantly hatch into what we'll call shit worms.

Kinda leaves you wondering. What is the aliens' true form? The red fuzz, the little shit weasel, the grey, or the big shit weasel? What's the point of gestating in a human if the shit worms just hatch from eggs? What does the red fuzz do? How can the red fuzz take over a person (Jonesy) and cause him to be able to transform instantaneously into a giant shit weasel for the purpose of chomping people? Did Kasdan and Goldman (two great craftsmen) not ask themselves these questions?

And now to Duddits. He is a kid not actually named Duddits who is retarded but gifted with psychic abilities. After the four friends (in treacly flashback) save Duddits from the abuses of older kids, they become fast friends and Duddits gifts them with psychic abilities (a plot device that plays surprisingly little role in the movie). Turns out old Duds is actually an alien (this, like the ability of Jonesy to transform into a super-sized shit weasel, is not from the book) who in the end kills the evil alien by stabbing him with his weaponized penis.

The ending is by far the worst part of the movie. It's a lame deus ex machina finale if I ever saw one, and makes the common mistake of thinking the audience is interested in seeing unimaginative CGI creatures battling it out.

Dreamcatcher, which I had heard was utter and total crap, turned out to be only half utter and total crap. The other half is a pretty good movie.

When oh when will the studios learn? If they want to save their craptastic script or get some tips on editing, just call Dr. Andy. Here are the notes I would have written on Dreamcatcher:

1) Cut all but the first flashback - the kid actors aren't that good, the period is not evoked effectively, they're unnecessary and slow the movie way down.

2) Emphasize Beaver's obsession with the toothpicks. There's a great shot at Beav's intro of him downing a slug of whiskey with toothpick in mouth. After that it comes and goes. This is a guy who ends up dying for a goddamn toothpick. This is a guy who chews so much wood he even calls himself Beaver. Let the audience know how important it is to him.

3) No way can a human, even if his mind has been taken over by an alien, transform instantly into a huge shit weasel, then instantly revert back. That's stupid. If he needs to kill quickly, give him a frigging gun.

4) Duddits is not an alien. Duddits is a beautiful gifted human who creates the dreamcatcher (the psychic network incorporating his four buddies) for the purpose of stopping the invasion. If he's a human, then humans save Earth. If he's an alien why even get involved with the humans? Also, if he's a human we never need hear nor read the phrase "weaponized penis".

5) Morgan Freeman's helicopter gets shot down over a frozen lake and you give us a fireball exploding behind a stand of trees? What is this, The A-Team? I want to see that helicopter plunge through the ice making frozen margaritas with the shattering rotor blades, something I've never seen in the movies before. I've seen fireballs.

6) Henry shoots Jonesy at the end. That's Jonesy's job, to die, which is why Duddits lured him into the street at the beginning. He's already been dead and knows it's okay to die. Plus, if Jonesy (the college professor) and Henry (the psychiatrist) live while Pete (the car salesman) and Beav (the laborer) die, it seems a bit too much like a statement about class.

7) Alternately, if it's too grim to have only the Punisher survive, Henry and Duddits go into the memory warehouse and kick Mr. Grey's alien ass with their combined psychic powers. Have the entire finale take place inside Jonesy's head. That'd be cool, too.

Bill, Larry, don't hesitate to call, guys, next time you're in a jam. I'm in the book.