Having read the book it was time to revisit David Lynch et al's attempt to film it. The cast is stellar: there are Lynch's long term collaborators (Kyle MacLachlan, Jack Nance, Everett McGill) and some big actors (Patrick Stewart, Jürgen Prochnow, José Ferrer, Max Von Sydow) who must have been sold something else entirely. Also a Sean Young jag from No Way Out; she looks far younger here than in Blade Runner, which was released two years earlier in 1982. Yes it's clunky and maladapted, the accents are all over the shop, but every so often Lynch does have a bit of fun. Ten to fifteen years later it would've gotten the three-movie The Lord of the Rings treatment, and I could've watched Lynch mine spice for more than a few seconds. Perhaps he should've made it into a musical. I feel he directly recycled some motifs and brainfarts into the Twin Peaks revival.
One star from Roger Ebert. But I didn't find it so much worse than Star Wars; perhaps we're so used to CGI now that any analog effects are welcome. Vincent Canby didn't make it past the introductory exposition, and fair enough too. That article is more about summarising the state of scifi movies in 1984; prophetically: "If Dune suggests anything — which I doubt — it's that we are retrogressing toward the future." Janet Maslin, also at the time.