What Dreams May Come

This was nicely different from the usual! Any time they leave behind the usual playbook which I won’t repeat here and venture into little visited territory it’s always welcome. And this one, I think, was actually unknown territory not just little visited. It was a fantasy, but not the usual time travel, magic snow globes, or earthly angels and such reaching out from beyond the grave.

Grace is an aspiring but so far unsuccessful writer who has been having some strange dreams lately. For 8 nights in a row, she has been dreaming about a handsome and nice man named Michael. In fact she has kind of fallen for this dream-man. When she finds out what his last name is during one dream, she looks  him up on line and finds out he is a real person. He is a singer who is touring around and is visiting Grand Rapids Michigan, less than an hour away from her hometown of Kalamazoo. As a former Michigander, I loved that central Michigan was featured for once instead of it’s more picturesque northern and northwestern coast. Or Detroit. Anyway, Grace drives to see his act and introduces herself. To her surprise, he does not know who she is, but when they coincidentally meet up again in a nearby diner, they make a connection and start to fall in love. So what is going on here?

Cut to Dream Central, where we humans have the stages set for the dreams we have when we fall asleep. We meet Alura, a new hire, and her mentor Harvey.  The workers there in Dream Central are supernatural non-humans who have never lived on earth. So not ghosts or angels. It is kept very vague but makes interesting food for thought. Alura is Grace’s “Dream Associate” and she has really screwed up. Every human has all of their memories stored on VHS tapes ( a quirky detail-Yay) from babyhood to the present. And these tapes, provide the fodder for our “Dream Weavers” to set the foundations for our dreams. Nothing beyond the dreamer’s actual experiences must be included in the framework. But somehow, Alura, played by a very cute Cecilia Lee, has mixed the tapes of Grace’s memories up  with Michael’s. So Grace has been having dreams based on wisps of Michael’s memories and that is how he has invaded her consciousness. We learn that Michael never remembers his dreams so that is why he does not remember Grace when they meet for reals. It was very bad that Grace and Michael’s tapes were mixed up, but when Grace, halfway in love with dream Michael actually finds him in real life, it is a code red situation. Destiny has been altered because of a mistake and the life trajectories of not only Michael and Grace but of untold thousands of others have taken a turn. Disaster and Doom!

Harvey and a very reluctant Alura, who is touched by their romance, must find them and take the ill begotten memories of each away. While Grace and Michael go on a train trip, fall in love, and inspire each other as writers, we also follow Harvey and Post-it Note and pie-loving Alura’s journey on this strange planet earth. To complicate matters, Since Grace’s memories of Michael are now real life ones, they cannot erase her memories of Michael without her permission. And the chances of them meeting again naturally instead of by way of dooming the universe are almost impossible since they live 2000 miles from each other. So it’s looking pretty bad for true love and a happy ending.

The romance in this one was good with touching and amusing moments and good chemistry between the two actors, both new to Hallmark. I liked them both and that Skyler Samuels is a dead ringer for Hallmark linchpin Cindy Busby, didn’t hurt her in my eyes. The plot was well conceived and imaginative.  No it didn’t always make sense or follow the rules of logic, but I just wanted to go with the flow and not analyze matters too closely. That says something, I guess. I even found myself tolerating Hallmark’s often used “follow your dreams no matter what even though doing so is at the expense of others” message. It was very good, not best of the best, but very good. The happy ending was contrived and out of left field. Plus it was pretty cheesy, even for a Hallmark.