The following are based on screenings at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, the Independent Feature Film Market in New York, and additional screenings in the Bay Area:



"Determinedly minor." --Dennis Harvey, Weekly Variety
(see below for full text of review)



"Seldom Dreaming is about the little fantasies and dreams of escape that get you through your day of work. It's about how dreams damage love and threaten your survival. It's about what you can do instead." -- Jed Bell

"Unconnected desire all over the place." -- Scott Johnson

"A three-day thinker." -- Danicka Hildreth, age 10

"A film that rewards careful attention." -- Jim Kallett

"Your film has given me a great deal to think about, and I know I will be discussing it with friends, not fortunate to have seen it as I did, for a long time to come."-- Gilbert A. Hansen

"I left the theater challenged and amused, mulling over my attitudes toward art, imagination, life and loyalty." -- Brynn Craffey

"In the end I find I have a lot of questions to be answered by myself." -- Gilbert A. Hansen

"Seldom Dreaming blends the real and the imaginary, the mundane and the visionary into a thought-provoking story that is both well acted and beautifully filmed." -- Brynn Craffey

"You have given me a gift of introspection. You have given me questions and emotions to deal with. You have given me, along with all of those you worked with to make this film, necessity for thought!" -- Gilbert A. Hansen

"I experienced Seldom as an ethereal place, jumbled in Carrie's memory, just barely out of reach." -- Kim Hallahan

"The movie winds up assessing the Gen X situation of mundaneness and despair in an invigorating, non-desperate way. The four central characters represent both parts of the X demographic--the tenuously middle-class and the already broke--and the whole range of strategies: building soda-can pyramids at an office job, hoping to write and not doing it, and fantasizing the total, impossible escape." -- Jed Bell

Have something to add? Drop me a line.

February 26 - March 3, 1996
used without permission

Seldom Dreaming is an amiable but aimless low-budget drama about some slacker types who'd rather skip "miserable, worthless, reality-land" in favor of their own little world -- quite literally, it turns out. Soft-pedaling its fantasy element and just about anything else that might have stirred greater interest, pic is earnest but determinedly minor, resulting in slim commercial chances.

Having just finished college, Carrie (Mary Jackman) reluctantly moves back into her mother's house and does what an aspiring writer must -- get a boring day job (at a clothing store). Her friend Eric (Mark Phillips) isn't much happier at his 9-to-5'er.

Far more lost, however, is another childhood pal, the elusive Kevin (Tim Ereneta). At the age of 10, Kevin and Carrie had "fallen through a doorway into another world, a place called Seldom" where, we're told, "every day (is) an adventure, followed by tea." They'd returned to drab Earth, but regretted it ever since -- especially Kevin, who drifts between minimum-wage jobs while plotting a second, permanent escape to Seldom.

The concept has potential, but writer-director Chris Ereneta hasn't done enough with it. These young adults and their discontents aren't very compelling, or very defined. The scenario dawdles along sans incident until an unspectacular finale. Long sequences are occupied by Carrie composing her blah short stories in voiceover, with barely relevant visuals.

Given lack of any poignance or magical atmosphere, pic works best in glimmers of sardonic humor, best realized by Phillips' engaging turn. Other perfs are OK, if one-dimensionally glum. Lensing is undistinguished, sound a tad variable.

-Dennis Harvey