After the considerable success the dramatic Robin Williams experienced in Good Will Hunting, Williams seemed determined to re-invent himself as dramedian at the end of the century. 1999's Jakob the Liar was a box office bomb, along with Bicentennial Man and 1998's What Dreams May Come (56 percent), though the latter two couldn't be faulted for lacking ambition. Bicentennial Man plots out a robot's 200-year long journey to become human, while What Dreams May Come is a metaphysical drama about a man who leaves Heaven and plumbs the depths of Hell to retrieve his recently deceased wife. Based on the Matheson novel of the same name, Williams overacts a bit (that's what happens when Williams does drama without a beard), but the movie's worth watching for its Oscar-winning depiction of Heaven. "[It's] like an abstract painting," Karen Hershenson of the Contra Costa Times writes about the film. "Full of vivid brushstrokes that hint at deeper meaning."

Matheson has a long-standing reputation as a thinking man's Stephen King, but he did occasionally dip into romantic melodrama. Along with What Dreams May Come, 1981's Somewhere in Time (60 percent) is an odd romance starring Christopher Reeve who travels back in time to get it on with Jane Seymour. Adapted by Matheson from his novel, he writes "Somewhere in Time is the story of a love which transcends time, What Dreams May Come is the story of a love which transcends death. I feel that they represent the best writing I have done in the novel form."