Waking Life

Pros: Unique visual appeal, some interesting dialogue
Cons: Boring at times, not for the mainstream

Waking Life is an experimental animated film from famed indie director Richard Linklater. This movie doesn’t have a real plot or character development because it takes the viewer on a journey through one man’s lucid dream. This is the type of ...

Pros: Linklater's Direction, Dialogue, Soundtrack, Cast, & the Variety of Animation Style.
Cons: None.

From 1991-1997, Richard Linklater had amassed four films that were widely praised for its character-driven stories and Linklater's independent improvisation. The films Slacker, Dazed & Confused, Before Sunrise, and subUrbia ...

Pros: A technical miracle, unlike anything you've ever seen
Cons: Must have very high attention level, or be prescribed to ritilin

Waking Life is a risk on any level.

You may spend it's 100 minutes in a self-induced retrospect, or you may spend the first five minutes scowling, up until the point you turn off the DVD player, either way its worth a shot.

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Pros: Interesting animation.
Cons: Squirm-in-your-seat dull, pedantic, and plotless.

A couple of nights after seeing Waking Life, I had a dream . . . I was talking to a small group of teenagers about the nature of love, and I was really on a roll. I was reciting sections of the Symposium, quotes by Kant, I think I gave them the whole...

Pros: The animation style is quite intriguing.
Cons: The self-important metaphysical diatribes are not.

Waking Life is seemingly being championed just for having a brain in its head. Unfortunately, a movie needs to have more than just a few lofty concepts and a box of crayons to make it a good MOVIE. The overall effect of Waking Life is...

Pros: Every single frame.
Cons: Absolutely nothing.

Where do I begin? I've sat in front of this screen for hours thinking of how to describe the film that's changed the way I look at movies forever. I guess I'll start out by saying this: The way people find spirituality in religion is exactly what I...

Pros: At least it is trying to be intelligent.
Cons: Unnatural lecture-like dialogue, animation feels like a cheap-trick and lacks any artistic character.

Next to Zardoz, this film ranks as one of the most dreadfully pretentious films I have ever experienced. This was quite a disappointment for me, as I have previously been a big fan of director Richard Linklater's work. His previous attempt at stream of ...

Pros: Basically, uh, everything.
Cons: Some crazy ideas expressed, but take each bit for what it's worth.

Waking Life isn’t a motion picture—it’s a motion painting. Sure, animated films are hardly new, but really, there’s nothing comparable to this in, well, the history of cinema. It’s an entirely mesmerizing experience on its visual merits alone. The...

Pros: Artsy, philosophical
Cons: Maybe a little too deep for a typical Friday night

If you are looking for a movie with a plot to follow, this is not it. However, if you are looking for a film that really challenges film itself and the definition of waking versus dreaming (as well as many other philosophical ideas), you've found it. ...

Pros: Surreal dreamlike experience
Cons: Pavor Nocturnus, incubus

Pros: animation is great, idea is great, movie is great
Cons: kind of preachy and pseudo-intellectual, maybe due to the nature of dreaming

I really, really, really wanted to see this movie. Coming out of the theatre last Monday, I thought maybe it was just my state of mind when I saw it that prevented me from truly enjoying it as much as I wanted to. But then my friends and I got to talking...

Pros: There are so many great lines and adages concerning dreams.
Cons: None. Believe me.

There are so many great lines and adages concerning dreams. There's the Tweedledee line in Alice in Wonderland," Are you the dreamer, or merely part of someone else's dream?" There's the Poe line about life being "a dream within a dream." Denise...

Pros: overall great ideas that work very well with the film.
Cons: sometimes hard to follow.

Before I went to see this movie, I was very unsure what to expect from all the reviews I had read, etc. All I heard was that it was “supposed” to be really good, but what does that really mean anyway? A friend of mine saw it and told me it was “really...

Pros: One of thee most interesting films I've ever seen.
Cons: Hard to sit through and sometimes hard to follow.

Just what is the nature of reality? What even defines "real"? How do we know that when we walk into a room and talk to people or they talk to us, that we're not really just dreaming the whole thing? These are some of the many, many questions this film...

Pros: Great animation, some very interesting verbal exchanges
Cons: No coherent plot, and several discussions are just too esoteric

Have you ever wondered about the quotes that run with movie ads, touting them as “Mesmerizing!” “Revolutionary!!” or “One of the Year’s Best!” when you know the films are dogs? A scandal this past summer (in which an overzealous marketer made up several...