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"Waking Life"
(Reviewed September 25, 2001)
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Are there enough self-absorbed, loopy, pseudo-science spouting sophomore philosophy majors in the world to make this movie a hit? That's doubtful, which is kind of a shame, because "Waking Life" does have some interesting bits among its often tedious segments of dream-theory claptrap. Also, this really is an amazingly beautiful animated movie. It uses a kind of floating, multiplane, rotoscoped animation technique that truly conveys the sense of wandering through a waking dream.
That, in fact, is exactly what the main character does. Unable to wake up, he meets several characters who spout theories on lucid dreaming, the nature of reality and time, and the paradox of free will versus determinism. Heady stuff. Unfortunately, the speakers often come off like the kind of hyped-up motormouths or heads-up-their-asses professors you made it a point to avoid in college. Remember all those times when you felt like you were being held hostage by some speed-tripping, polysyllabic bore with only the loosest of holds on reality, but you were too polite to say, "Man, you are totally full of crap?" That's how a few of the "deep-thinkers" in "Waking Life" come off.
My main problem with the movie's dialog had more to do with the aching obviousness of its polemics than with its new-agey "dreams are reality" piffle. In one segment, a guy drives around spouting political statements through a P.A. system's speakers that are mounted on the top of his car. Although I agree with just about everything he says--essentially, that life in our corporate police state has its suckier aspects--there was nothing especially original or catchy about the way he made his points. "Republicans and Democrats are two sides of the same coin." Well, duh!
Then again, maybe some teenagers and twenty-somethings who see this movie at midnight shows, and who have not already figured out that politics and capitalism in this country are a cruel and deceitful sham, will have their political as well as their philosophical consciousnesses raised. Then they can all wake up and VOTE LIBERTARIAN, and life truly will be a dream!
Back Row Grade: C+
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