3/5 Review: Waking Life (2001)
  by Matthew Lanka
Director: Richard Linklater
Writer: Richard Linklater
Starring: Wiley Wiggins, Bill Wise, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Alex Jones, Richard Linklater, John Christensen

"What the hell is this guy talking about?" I thought that exact phrase about 15 times throughout this movie. Combine very abstract visual animations of live action video with very existential and philosophical monologues and dialogues and you have Waking Life. You will probably need to see it at least twice to fully absorb everything.
There is a very loose story. Willy Wiggins is getting lectures from or talking with various people about the nature of reality and the meaning of life, and the whole thing is animated. There isn't really a beginning, middle, or end, just a series of conversations or monologues. At times it feels like a really weird, artsy documentary.
Even though some of the scenes are ostensibly conversations, the characters don't talk normally, the way you or I would. The all feel very scripted, and to me the bizarre animations are covering up what is probably some very bad acting, or at least unconvincingly delivered lines of philosophical dialogue.
If you like artsy movies or want your mind blown off the chart, then this movie is probably for you. After a few scenes of re-defining the nature of reality, I found myself desensitized to what the characters were trying to say. You aren't really given time to digest the significance of each character's point of view before you're thrust with another, and I didn't feel that the artsy animation style really added anything to what the characters said. More often than not I found it unnecessary or even distracting.

Final Score: 6/10

4/5 'toons and philosophical enquiries meld surprisingly well
  by Muzzlehatch (the walls of Gormenghast)
Where to start with this one? First of all, it's visually impressive (though not absolutely mind-blowing as some have said...if you've seen a lot of animation, you've probably seen plenty of stuff this inventive), making some of the best use of rotoscoping (animated tracing over live-action figures, with animated backgrounds) that I've seen in a feature; it's got a fairly ambitious intellectual conceit (a man who may or may not be on the verge of death throughout the film dreams in a lucid way about what the nature of reality, consciousness, free will, etc really are); it's got great music (by Glover Gill)...what more could you want? Well, for starters, it works out to be not much more than philosophical ramblings, and I think to some extent it wears out its welcome. Now, if you knew me you'd know I often like long movies...I have no problem with a lot of work that a lot of people call "slow"; but this was to me too much of the same thing. And some of the observations are facile in a druggy-stoner way that just made me think, who cares? Like pothead versions of Seinfeld and company, frankly.

Still, adding it up, I'm thinking about it quite a lot since I first watched the excellent, feature-packed DVD a couple of years ago. Another aspect I really liked was the self-referentiality: the film as a whole is very reminiscent of the director's first feature, SLACKER; it contains a short scene with Jesse and Celine, the characters from the previous BEFORE SUNRISE that also obviously looks forward to the sequel to that film, BEFORE SUNSET; the technique used and some of the more fantastic imagery seems now a tryout for the director's later rotoscoped Philip K Dick adaptation, A SCANNER DARKLY; and both Linklater and his good friend (and fellow experimental-at-times filmmaker) Steven Soderbergh make appearances. And there's a scene or two late in the film that is reminiscent of the work of another extremely self-referential artist, the experimental American SF writer Samuel R. Delany (specificially, his 1000-page, Joycean "Dhalgren").

I need to see it again; reading some pretty intelligent reviews this afternoon leads me to believe that a deeper reading would be more rewarding. Despite many reservations, I'm giving it high marks simply for attempting subject matter and film techniques that nobody else in America seems interested in. Linklater has proved himself a great disciple of European art cinema, not just the usual Scorsese-Coppola-DePalma stuff, and that's all to the good.

5/5 Fantastic Movie
  by The Philosopher
This is one of the greatest movies I have ever seen. Heavily layered with meaning, the protagonist goes from person to person listening to everything from expositions on Existentialsim to Lucid Dream Work. If you can keep your opions out of it until the end and merely WITNESS - merely watch and listen, I promise you will find gold and your inner voice will definitely speak to you.

Highly, highly, recommended.

5/5 Oneironauts, or life is but a waking dream...
  by OAKSHAMAN (Algoma, WI United States)
It must be a mark of how far out of the loop I am these days that I didn't hear about this film until now. On the other hand, like the main character, it seemed in a strange way to echo my own speculations on so many things. Perhaps that isn't so strange, for as one of the dream conversations points out, we are all interconnected at some level- that is why new ideas seem to pop up in many places at the same time and are soon mastered by the many. That is no doubt why this film popped up. I kept saying to myself I've been here before, I've been here before...

So many ideas are covered here from the nature of dreams, the nature of modern life, the nature of death, the nature of existence. The metaphysical ideas of PKD are even touched upon. Projects this intelligent usually do not get made since so few will really get it. But then, perhaps that it was made heralds a universal shift in consciousness.

Some people will automatically reject this film as a sophomoric bull session. Those are the people with no curiosity about the underlying nature of reality. If you live in the sort of community where conversations never seem to get beyond knee jerk politics, weather, and football, then this film will come as a godsend.

5/5 My Favorite Movie!
  by jond
The Waking Life is my Favorite movie of all time. I can't count how many times I've watched it.
If you like weird philosophical movies, this is it.