Falling asleep a good choice during ‘Dreamcatcher’

In theaters

DREAMCATCHER, directed by Lawrence Kasdan, written by William Goldman and Lawrence Kasdan, based on the novel by Stephen King, 134 minutes, rated R.

In Lawrence Kasdan’s “Dreamcatcher,” the latest Stephen King novel to draw blood on the big screen, aliens are the order of the day- and what an appearance they make onscreen.

What do these aliens look like, you might ask? Let’s just say they recall oversized male genitalia with thousands of sharp, pointy teeth – the sort which, when properly employed, can literally bite your head off.

As written by Kasdan (“The Big Chill”) and the Academy Award-winning William Goldman (“Misery”), the movie is occasionally entertaining at first, but then it dissolves into a convoluted mess. That’s a shame, particularly since the movie is based on one of King’s better books, a novel that borrowed liberally and intentionally from the very pop culture canon King himself has been contributing to and influencing for years.

What the movie doesn’t pull off is what King does so well in his book – it never strikes the right balance between the several subplots jockeying for attention throughout the story. Indeed, by the film’s midpoint, the competing story lines become too much for Kasdan to handle and the movie falls apart in its wheezy attempt to contain them.

In the film, Jason Lee, Thomas Jane, Damian Lewis and Timothy Olyphant are Beaver, Henry, Jonesy and Pete, four longtime friends who, as kids, developed telepathic abilities when they save a disabled boy named Duddits (Andrew Robb) from being further humiliated by the group of bullies trying to feed him dog feces.

Now world-weary adults converging on their yearly hunting retreat in the Maine woods, the four men are confronted with the dark side as hundreds of animals mysteriously start fleeing the forest en masse and a man named Rick (Eric Keenlyside) stumbles into their cabin with one enormous, gurgling belly.

Quicker than you can say “Jiffy Pop,” Rick has popped, exploding and unleashing one mother of an alien creature, which looks alarmingly like a towering replica of E.T. crossed with a bald-headed version of Chris Jansing from MSNBC.

Before anyone can duck and cover, the film launches into a series of subplots, jumping from one in which Morgan Freeman humiliates himself as a crazed, gun-toting military man determined to mow down these aliens with the gung-ho help of Tom Sizemore. There’s the four men as kids coming to terms with their relationship with Duddits, Duddits dying from leukemia as an adult (Donnie Wahlberg), and Jonesy protecting his memory from alien occupancy.

What ensues is a movie nobody will mistake as one of King’s better adaptations.

Indeed, what’s lost in Kasdan’s translation isn’t just the meaning of the title, which is all but overlooked, but also King’s expert handling of comedy, mystery, drama and horror.

In the book, those elements were given room to develop and breathe; they felt natural, not forced. But in this movie – which, to be fair to Kasdan, must compress 882 pages into two rushed hours – the handling of those elements is sketchy, creating a disconnect as Kasdan struggles to find a tone amid all the ongoing belching, flatulence and frat-boy humor.

Few contemporary writers understand childhood better than Stephen King; he writes about what it means to be a kid as if he grew up with the sole purpose of never forgetting. His novel “It” is an excellent example, but then so is his novella “Stand by Me,” which director Rob Reiner beautifully captured in his 1986 movie.

Some of the best moments in the novel “Dreamcatcher” came from King’s long look back into the young lives of Beaver, Henry, Jonesy, Pete and Duddits.

What he gets right isn’t just the dialogue, but the atmosphere. In the movie, all of that is lost in Kasdan’s shallow, uninvolving attempt to re-create what King does so effortlessly on the page.

“Dreamcatcher” is being paired with “Final Flight of the Osiris,” a 10-minute, computer-animated short inspired by “The Matrix” that finds in its completely digitized characters more heart and soul than Kasdan mines in his film.

Grade: C-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays and Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.