The Dream Team

It is hard not to enjoy pictures about oddballs and eccentrics whose visual and verbal malapropisms seem to lend themselves to the medium. Howard Zieff's Dream Team is no less enjoyable because its eccentrics are refugees from a sanatorium. Cinematic cousins to the heroes of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, the dreamteam consists of four New Jersey mental patients who are treated to a New York City field trip by their psychiatrist. Though they are viewed by other doctors as incurable, their doctor feels that a trip to Yankee Stadium will at least give them some happy memories. Unfortunately, when one of them, Albert, has to make a lavatory stop, the doctor is beaten and left unconscious by some crooked cops and the team must fend for themselves. During the next two days each man has to face up to a bit of sanity in order to survive ... (Screen International 15.4.89)