By Arnolf Bentham, film critic, philanthropist, stalker of Leo.

Well, well, well. How society has changed. I saw Inception last night, and was told that it was supposed to be one of the most original and innovative movies of the year. Original? Please. For years I’ve had Leonardo DiCaprio enter my dreams. Not only that, but when I told people about it, they acted like I was hiding something from them! It started after I saw that Titanic movie, and it’s been constant ever since. So why is everyone lauding Christopher Nolan for an idea that’s been around for more than a decade?

I still remember the day after the first time Leonardo DiCaprio came sneaking into one of my dreams. I woke up and told my girlfriend about it, hoping she would find it as interesting as I did. She instead was perturbed and asked me if I had anything I wanted to admit to her. What a peculiar response! And now, years later, Nolan has the exact same concept on the big screen and people are acting like it’s never been done before! When I tell people about Leo coming into my dreams, they’re often horrified. But when the story has a multimillion-dollar budget attached to it, suddenly it’s not so “disgusting” and “needlessly explicit”. Christopher Nolan can talk about DiCaprio showing up in dreams but he doesn’t need to “leave me alone you pervert”. What’s up with that?

As a matter of fact, just last week (before it came out) I was discussing the latest dream with my therapist. After I was done, did I get a standing ovation? Of course not. I was instead told that I was clearly hiding something from my girlfriend, friends, and family and need to just come out with it. Let me ask you, has anyone told that to Mr. Nolan after watching the movie? I didn’t think so. Heck, my mother went to go see Inception opening night, but years ago when I mentioned a dream I had with DiCaprio and I sharing a Blizzard at Dairy Queen, she replied that she “honestly wasn’t that surprised”. Am I missing something here?

Now to be fair, my dreams with Leo don’t have a superstar cast like Inception does. It’s usually just Leo and myself. Sometimes some Turkish prison guards or Italian bellhops will show up, but they rarely have speaking roles. Is that why my dreams aren’t cool like the ones in Inception? I suppose if I had the up and coming young hunk Joseph Gordon-Levitt in my dreams people would…umm…mmm…wait what was I talking about again?

Regardless, I would still say that my dreams are far more interesting than the ones depicted in the humdrum Inception. Every moment of my dreams is teeming with passion and tension, and motifs of questioning morality and defying societal standards are commonplace. Like Inception though, my dreams often end in a very climactic fashion, and leave me dying for more. I found it interesting that the characters in Inception have to find ‘kicks’ to awaken themselves from their dreams, as my ‘kick’ comes naturally and reliably at the end of any Leo dream I have.

I suppose I should thank Christopher Nolan for making it cool to have these dreams, but it seems a little unfair. As I said above, my real problem is that the story is not as original as everyone has been saying. If the act of ‘inception’ is planting something in someone that wasn’t there before, than I’ve been regularly incepted by Leonardo DiCaprio in dreams for the past ten years. Meanwhile, Nolan is getting paid handsomely for this idea. What’s next, a movie in which Christian Bale shows up in dreams? Or maybe a movie in which Mark Wahlberg shows up in dreams? Come on Hollywood, we’ve seen it before. Recycling may be routine these days, but this is just ridiculous. Nolan should be ashamed for trying to play this off as original. If anything, the screenplay to Inception was ‘adapted’, and there is no doubt that it came nowhere close to being as good as my originals.