Review of Waking Life (2001) by Kody N — 06 Oct 2009

This is a very unique movie that I am glad that I saw (thanks to my friend Sarah) but going in I had high expectations for it as an independent film that Iâ??ve only heard good things about.

Good things: The abstract art that this movie creates is very beautiful and very different than anything I have seen in film. The animation plus the philosophy on dreaming and life go almost perfectly together (where a live action film like this would be a JOKE). It is a draw your own conclusion about what we are talking about flick but it still leads you in a certain direction where you can eventually find yourself, but that starts after the first hour. This is a movie that dives deeper than movies should sometimes go and is commendable as an artistic piece in total.

Bad things: Just generally, this movie is a live-action turned animation of people talking and that is about it. At times is feels poetic while at other times it feels like rambling. Nothing really makes sense of why we are around characters that just stand around and philosophize about like the whole time and I believe that if you do not have subtitles on, you will not catch anything at all. One of my biggest problems with the movie is that I just did not feel smart enough to be watching it. They used so many big words and ideas that it almost sounded like Baz Lurhmannâ??s Romeo and Juliet again. I did enjoy the ideas that I did understand, but those came in the second half of the movie.

So like a poem, this movie can be beautiful and boring at the same time. A winner for the person looking for something completely different and deep. A loser for anyone wanting to be entertained and forget about life. My vote: 6/10.