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‘Dream Team’ Review: Hazy Indie Tests the Limits of How Unserious a Sci-Fi Procedural Can Be

Whitney Horn and Lev Kalman's ’90s thriller homage 'Dream Team' stars Esther Garrel and Alex Zhang Hungtai as agents investigating poisonous coral.

The film, which is receiving a limited theatrical release in New York and L.A. on Nov. 15, starts on firm ground, with a familiar buddy-detective premise that many a late-night genre junk programmer has used as a sturdy narrative foundation. The film reaches an early peak with the introduction of the gloriously named Dr. Veronica Beef (Minh T Mia), who delivers a nonsense exposition dump that somehow begins in a laboratory and ends in a hot tub, with all the characters in a state of undress. She lends credibility to loose genre rules, much as Kyle MacLachlan did in “Twin Peaks,” or Patrick Stewart in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” or any number of actors in ’90s projects that “Dream Team” is drawing elements from.

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