New On Netflix: The Dream Team

[BoxTitle]The Dream Team[/BoxTitle] [Netflix] [NetflixWatch id="70004007"/] [NetflixAdd id="70004007"/]

A strange and seemingly slapped-together comedy that came out of nowhere a couple of months before Michael Keaton made his first bow as Bruce Wayne, The Dream Team chronicles the misadventures of a quartet of psychiatric patients running amok in New York City (where you can’t tell the “crazy” people from the “sane” ones, hardy har!) after their chaperone doc (Dennis Boutsikaris) gets knocked out by a bunch of thugs. Even before Batman, Keaton was beneath this kind of stuff, so he seems literally lost and out of place here (and his phoned-in performance doesn’t help matters much); still, if you’re going to gather Keaton, Christopher Lloyd (who appeared with Keaton in a much better ’80s comedy, Mr. Mom), Peter Boyle and Stephen Furst (an Animal House alum) and set them loose in the Big Apple, you’re bound to get at least a few laughs, most of them coming from Boyle’s character’s religious delusions (“I will hold back the waters,” he assures everyone after Keaton wonders just how structurally sound the Lincoln Tunnel really is). Lorraine Bracco is cute (and nowhere near as shrill and annoying as she would later be in Medicine Man) as a diner waitress and Keaton’s ex-sweetie.