Dir: Richard Linklater.
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jnr, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson, Rory Cochrane.
Director Richard Linklater uses state-of-the-art animation called “rotoscoping” to deliver the year’s wackiest animated film. Matrix star Keanu Reeves heads up an all-star cast in this futuristic fable based on Philip K Dick’s sci-fi novel, which he wrote after the loss of good friends to LSD.
California. Seven years hence. The drug of choice is Substance D (for Death) and the population is hooked. Charles Fred wakes up and no amount of scratching will dislodge the aphids that plague his scalp. Well, they are all in his head.
Bob Arctor (Reeves) is deep undercover, investigating a Los Angeles drug den. He has left behind his beautiful wife, destroyed his beautiful house and is now travelling in ever-decreasing circles of substance-induced disassociation. At the office he wears a scramble-suit - a constantly shifting camouflage that ensures no one knows his true identity. Alas he’s not sure of himself.
Addicted to drugs and involved with a dealer (Ryder) he’s both criminal and cop, and shares his suburban shack with a trio of fellow dope-heads (played by Robert Downey Jr, Woody Harrelson and Dazed And Confused’s Rory Cochrane). But who is investagating whom? It’s all rather confusing here.
Using the same rotoscoping animation he first employed in Waking Life director Richard Linklater sticks to the spirit of Philip K Dick’s paranoid tale. Faithfulness can be a double-edged sword, though, as this film proves. No matter how startling it’s visuals, this remains a movie about stoners lazing around and talking nonsense.
Still it’s never less than beautiful to watch, while Robert Downey Jnr is on brilliant form as the motormouth loon. It’s also great to see the light-fingered Winona Ryder back on form, as Bob’s main squeeze.
It’s a trip...the stoned paranoia is hilarious, such as when they debate what happened to the missing gears on a stolen bike or try to fix their car, with stand-out turns from Hollywood wreck-heads Downey Jr and Harrelson providing some laugh-out-loud moments. But the film drifts into tedium when it’s paranoia takes it to different levels - who’s spying on whom, who’s informing whom?
Dick’s novels routinely make the most uninteresting films - Imposter, Paycheck, Minority Report and Blade Runner, full of panicked characters running away from futuristic authorities in dystopian cities. Of course these visions are supposed to reflect our present day but is the future going to be that miserable? Well maybe if we are all turned into cartoons.