Being two movies stitched together is usually a bad thing, but, in the case of Dream, it's actually a selling point.

With lightning-fast pacing, clever editing, and a cast of absurd everyman hard-luckers hellbent on riding the line between hilarity and pathos at every turn, what looks like it should be an interesting take on a typical sports movie quickly reveals itself to be a surprisingly delightful romp that just happens to take place primarily on a soccer field.

...until about the halfway point, when it genuinely becomes a sports movie, with as much heart as there were laughs only moments before.

Which is not to say that this change in focus feels abrupt or inconsistent or in any way a departure in quality. While it admittedly does feel like somewhat of a jump into a second movie, it's more a direct sequel to the first half than an attempt to have it's cake and eat it too, owing this seeming shift in attention as much to the movie's uncanny ability to deliver twice as much story from its first half runtime as to its narrative need to transition to the sports-centric plot they've been working towards all that time.

None of it needed to be as good as it was. And yet...

Solid. Surprising. And a heck of a good time.