Dream a Little Dream

Dream a Little Dream is a 1989 American romantic teen comedy film directed by Marc Rocco, starring Corey Feldman, Corey Haim & Meredith Salenger.

Plot
One day when high school slacker student Bobby Keller cuts through a shortcut in his backyard, he runs into a girl named Lainie Diamond, whom Bobby has a crush on. During the collision, elderly professor Coleman Ettinger (Jason Robards) is performing a meditation exercise in the yard with his wife Gena (Piper Laurie), theorizing that if they can enter a meditative alpha state together voluntarily, they’ll be able to live together forever, but just when they’re about to complete the experiment, the teenagers' collision renders both of them unconscious, enacting a type of body switch between the four characters.

The next day, Bobby wakes up in his bedroom only to discover that he is actually Coleman trapped inside of Bobby’s body Coleman leaves the house to find his wife but he returns when he can’t find her or make any sense of the situation. On his way back to Bobby's home, Coleman plays up the role of Bobby for his family and friend, just wanting to go to sleep to see if the alpha state he attains in dreams will give him any clue to what has gone wrong with the experiment.

In his dream, Coleman is greeted by the real Bobby, who appears to be trapped in a dream partially generated by Coleman's own subconscious. Coleman discovers that Gena, skeptical of her husband's "dream state" theory from the beginning, is also trapped in the dream but is unable to communicate with him because part of her mind has been transferred to Lainie's body.

Bobby informs Coleman that he doesn’t have that much time left to prevent what’s left of his wife from forgetting about him and end up becoming lost in the dream forever. Bobby claims to know the secret to switch them all back, but he is reluctant to help Coleman do so, finding the dream-world that he now inhabits to be more satisfying than the physical world in which he existed as a troubled teen.

Coleman realizes he only has a few days (while pretending to be Bobby) to overcome generation gaps, high-school bullies, Lainie's violent and unstable boyfriend, Joel & Lainie's bitter and manipulative divorced mother in order to improve Bobby's grades, love-life, relationships with his family & friends and connect with Lainie (who is not particularly fond of Bobby) enough to convince her to recreate the meditation experiment that might save his wife.

Cast

 * Corey Feldman as Bobby Keller
 * Corey Haim as Dinger
 * Meredith Salenger as Lainie Diamond
 * Jason Robards as Coleman Ettinger
 * Piper Laurie as Gena Ettinger
 * Harry Dean Stanton as Ike Baker
 * William McNamara as Joel
 * Ria Pavia as Maureen
 * Lala as Shelley
 * Laura Lee Norton as Marge
 * John Ward as Derek
 * Matt Adler as Dumas
 * Josh Evans as Low Life #1
 * Jody Smith as Low Life #2
 * Kent Faulcon as Low Life #3
 * Alex Rocco as Gus Keller
 * Victoria Jackson as Kit Keller
 * Russell Livingstone as Neighbor Next Door
 * Mickey Thomas as Mr. Pattison
 * Fran Taylor as Sheila Baker
 * Susan Blakely as Cherry Diamond
 * John Grissom as P.E. Coach
 * John Ford Coley as Ron

Production
The movie began filming in January of 1988 in Wilmington, North Carolina. Its original working title was called "Long Before Tomorrow".

Four days before filming began, Corey Haim had broken his leg and the character of Dinger had to be rewritten to include the injury. While his actual cast was removed during filming, Haim had to wear a fake one for the remainder of the production. In the movie, Dinger says that his mother hit him with her car, but in real life, Haim broke his leg while trying to teach his mom how to ride a motorbike.

At the time of the filming, both Corey Haim and Corey Feldman were suffering from drug addiction and Feldman also had an obsession with Michael Jackson & included Jackson style-type dance moves in the dance sequence scene with Lainie in the gym.

Box Office
“Dream a Little Dream” ranked at #5 at the box office, grossing $2,568,963 during its opening weekend and $5,552,441 domestically.

Critical Reception
The movie received negative reviews from critics and was given a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes based on 9 reviews.

Rogert Ebert wrote in his review: “''The movie itself, to put it tactfully, is incomprehensible. The plot is a disorganized mess, and the director, Marc Rocco, seems unable to tell even this simpleminded story with any degree of clarity''.”

Washington Post [Richard Harrington from the Washington Post said that audiences would have no idea what the film’s plot was all about.