In Costner, writer-director Robinson has found the perfect player for a personal-stakes game, a guy with a leg-it-out intensity and kidlike enthusiasm. It's Costner's eye-on-the-ball exuberance that carries Dreams past its often mechanical aesthetic.

All of this would work better if Robinson built up the reality of the town more, made the citizens a more palpable presence, as Frank Capra did in Hollywood's greatest fable-fantasy, It's a Wonderful Life.

The sentimentality, of which there is plenty, is nicely balanced by a humor of ironic pragmatism, as when Ray, having built his baseball field as a monument to human dreams, decides to charge tourists $20 a head to visit it.

The end result may be highly unusual and untraditionally un-cinematic, but it’s nevertheless sweet and touching, embellished with moments of effective humor and stirring sentimentality.