If you've never seen any of Woody Allen's movies, make sure you don't choose this turkey as your introduction to his otherwise wonderful oeuvre. The plot is a cliché taken straight out of a daytime soapie and despite a seemingly excellent leading cast, the acting is beyond wooden. Colin Farrell is reported as saying this movie took him more takes than Miami Vice. Pity they didn't take a lot more or better still, take none at all and start over. Abysmal.

Ten years after it was made, I tracked this film down on Amazon. It never got much of a release in the UK and, as far as I know, it has never been shown on television. I'm not surprised. It is even worse than Woody Allen's other two British ventures: Match Point and Scoop. Everything I said about those two films applies in spades to Cassandra's dream: implausible plot, terrible dialogue and wooden acting. It employs a large number of fine British actors. I can only imagine how thrilled they were at being invited to appear in a film by the great Woody Allen and how shattered were their illusions after they had read the script. It was like a 1950's British second feature. Surprisingly, it lasts for 148 interminable minutes. Woody usually confines himself to a snappy 90 minutes. The kindest thing I can say about this film was that I never would have recognised that it was a Woody Allen film. There are a large number of 1 star reviews for this film on IMDb, most of them saying more or less what I have written here so there is not really anything else that I can usefully add.

I had the misfortune of seeing this movie last night. Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell's names on the credits had me worried (neither could be called acting heavyweights) but there was enough talent on show (Tom Wilkinson in particular) to make it worth a punt.15 minutes in and I was literally laughing out loud - both McGregor (a Scot) and Farrell's (an Irishman) London accents were unbelievably poor. Like the dialect/language coach had gone on strike, or hadn't even been hired. More Dick Van Dyke than Ray Winstone I'm afraid.The script? A lot of the screenplay sounds improvised, there are audible pauses in some of the conversations which suggest the actors were given a lot of rope here - but they're just not up to the job, plain and simple. McGregor mugs constantly, over-thinking every utterance, Farrell just looks lost most of the time, unable to conjure the emotional turmoil his character goes through, it all looks and sounds very am-dram.Philip Glass's score is another sore point - the edgy, syncopated strings sounds like they've been dropped in from another movie, they just don't suit the movie at all. A missed opportunity I think, I'm a huge fan of Glass's work.I wont bore you any further with my review; definitely the worst Allen movie I have ever seen (I've seen most of them) bad casting, bad script, poor choice of score and the cinematography looks more like a TV movie than a decently-budgeted movie.Avoid like the plague.

Ian (Ewan McGregor) and Terry (Colin Farrell) are brothers who gets into money troubles. They like to play big, buying a boat together, looking at flat, and driving fast cars from the garage where Terry works. Terry gets into gambling debts of 90,000 pounds to some loan sharks. Ian is pretending to be a big property developer to win over beautiful actress Angela (Hayley Atwell). They go to uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson) for the money. Only uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson) asks for an unbelievable favor to take out former associate Martin Burns.These are not particularly good people. Ewan and Colin are so charming that you want to root for them, but the characters don't allow you to. The tone of the movie is too light. Woody Allen just doesn't have the gritty ugly style that this movie is demanding. It seems like he keeps trying to make an amusing character study. It would be a lot better as a dirty thriller. Woody Allen just isn't that kind of director.