Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a trinity of reviews for Richard Linklater's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A SCANNER DARKLY. We may get more reviews sent, but for now there are three. One doesn't like it much, but the other two are very happy with it as it stands. Can't wait to see it my own self, especially with that rumor that recently surfaced about Radiohead doing the score! Here's review number one!
Ahoy, lads. Constable Kreegal riding through with another adventure for you.
Hot on the heels of rumors concerning Radiohead scoring Richard Linklater's newest opus, there was a screening of "A Scanner Darkly" at the Arclight in Hollywood last night.
I saddled the horse in the early evening and headed that way, as this was a film I have been looking forward to ever since Philip K. Dick would sit on my lap and dream about android sheep with me.
Before anyone asks, no, it's not "Beyond Sunset" or "The Matrixcois" or "Dazed and BadNewsBears". It's not even "Waking Life", although it's just as pretty.
In this tale of addiction and conspiracy set in a not-too-distant-future Orange County, Keanu Reeves lives with Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey, Jr. His girlfriend is Winona Ryder. They have a drug-fiend friend, Rory Cochrane, who starts off the film covered in bugs.
Everyone in the film is on drugs and/or incredibly paranoid. There is a new designer drug in the world that is 100% addictive. Keanu works for a drug enforcement agency, as do others, to spy on his friends. He wears a chameleon coat of always changing faces and bodies to avoid suspicion in a world where everyone is suspicious of everything.
Eventually, since no one is supposed to know the identity of the informants, not even the police, Reeves is asked to spy on himself. Thus we begin to roll down the mudslide of extreme paranoia into sweat-inducing, pulse-pounding absurdity.
But that's a great thing.
This film is beautiful in the same way that Sin City was beautiful. Hell, it even deals with some of the same issues of corruption. The animation is just skewed enough to keep you off-balance as a viewer, and so realistic at times you don't even know what you're watching anymore.
The acting is superb in this film. Keanu and Winona are good. Woody is great. Robert Downey, Jr. is fucking brilliant. He not only channels a manic, 12-Monkian Brad Pitt, a drug-addled Hunter Thompson AND French Stewart, but he plunges himself into it as well. The dialogue between Woody and Robert is A Material. Just hysterical. And funny, too.
Philip K. Dick was a brilliant sci-fi writer with a scathing social commentary rumbling around in his brain at all times, and, much like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" and "Minority Report", it's very much alive here.
Not only does it take its shots at the government and the war on drugs, but it takes its shots at society as a whole, where we are built to trust our friends and those that should take care of us, only to find out that things were never what we thought. It's a hard lesson to learn, and you always have to learn it the hardest way.
All in all, this is a truly inspiring piece of work on behalf the actors, the director, the animators and the writer. It'll be worth your $10 in March or whenever it's supposed to come out.
It does what all true, old-school sci-fi should do... it makes you think. And there is no score from Radiohead.... yet.
What does a scanner see? A scanner sees your soul.
Now for the next...
I scanned a screening of "A Scanner Darkly" last night in LA. As usual, we're told this isn't final animation, not final music or mix. Still, it looked pretty finished to me, right along with the tacked on "explain to us dumbasses" ending, probably created and added from comments by an earlier focus group.
Super Extra Non Spoilery Review
TOTALLY DISSAPPOINTED.
End of Super Extra Non Spoilery Review
Yep.
That's all I got for you non spoiler people.
Please scroll down.....
For my opinion......
On...
A SCANNER DARKLY....
Which I had to explain.....
With a bunch o spoilers...
Here we go, slappies.....
Begin Spoilers:
The Story:
Having not read the PKD book, I can only go from the plot presented onscreen. A strange and scary world set seven years from whenever you end up watching this (read: cautionary timeless or cautionary current). A government that doesn't trust itself, nor its public, who are too busy being doped up on brain hemisphere splitting hallucenogenic drugs called "Death" or "D". The very credit sequence of the film is a giveaway to what you'll be experiencing for the next 90 minutes, as a floaty and wiggly lined drug addict washes himself of tiny green jumping aphids repeatedly, then washes himself and his floaty wiggly dog too. So if this annoys you, leave the theater immediately. I'd say that the animation process/style was the biggest problem I had with this film, because it was distracting and annoying. If this kind of floaty squiggle tracing animation is "cool and different" for you, you might like the film.
The first scene with Keanu is actually confusing, as Keanu is introducing some cops (and us) to the scanner suit which he is wearing. He is interrupted by himself, loses focus, and this really long pause is adequate enough to completely derail my concentration from what the fuck is going on in the first place. We find that he is in charge of "watching himself", since he is an undercover scanner cop in a multipersonality suit, talking with other scanner cops who could also be anybody under that suit (tell me you didn't see the end coming a million miles a second aimed directly at your cortex after this little bit is introduced). He is also an addict to "D", along with his very strange and equally addicted roommates, played by Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson. The story becomes far more absorbing, as we see these characters interact with each other, and are given more to see of this horrible mind controlled world. Keanu is spying on himself, and we as the viewer are supposed to lose track alongside him as to who and where we are in this strange self confessional mindfuck. Paranoid is the key word to everyone in this vision of the future, where no one trusts each other, mind control is a norm, and everyone is on some type of drug.
The last third actually became incredible well written, piecing together all the moments into some kind of freaked out logic, until the quick ending stunk up the place by giving us to much too late. The ending has Keanu at the New Path Farm, which we see is a halographic hiding place for the hallucenogenic flowers which are used to make the "Death" drug. He is pretty lost after ODing on D, just shambling about with his drool bucket like a smiley mongoloid. Then we have this lame tacked on explaino-vision scene with Winona Ryder and some goofball cop, where they tell us everything that has happened over the last hour and why, and can Keanu escape and bring them back the info they need to bust up the drug ring. LAME. If anybody involved in producing this film is reading this, please cut this scene out. The people who do go see this won't need a childs explanation and a "tuck in its bedtime" from you. Just let Keanu walk off into the distance. We don't need the weak retell, thanks.
The Animation:
Annoying, boring, in many scenes amatuerishly done, and most importantly completely unnecessary. This story definitely lends itself to this animation style in idea only. Seeing it is really kind of a nightmare in itself. It is also sadly distracting from what are truly amazing performances from Robert Downey Jr and Woody Harrelson. Instead of helping the story along, it becomes a distraction itself, and hampers what could have been a truly great film. They've refined it since "Waking Life", but it is still has a nauseating headache inducing quality to it. Its great for 30 second commercials, but try 90 minutes of this shitty rotoscoped weird floaty bullshit, and you'll feel ill. My feeling overall is that this look is a complete and total waste of time, and that this film would actually be better if they just used the DV footage they shot. The animation is unnecessary, annoying, and distracting from what is actually an interesting concept in paranoia.
The acting from Robert Downey Jr is fantastic, funny, and at times brilliant. Having this great acting traced over by some squigllevision college kids just sucks completely.Keanu is okay, not great not bad, just is. Woody brings out his bizarro animal child style to this role, and when these three are onscreen together and interacting about all their strange paranoias, the film really does takeoff. Winona is passable in this film, and we get a few rotoscoped animo shots of naked, you can tell the animators took extra time to get those breasts all glisteny and shiny, with the all the weight and movement of real breasts. Hats off to these sweaty pixel clicken geebs! Many of the other scenes unfortunately look like a retarded monkey tracing with his gnarled feet onto wiggly parchment, totally awesome!
Even the Scanner Suits themselves, which have a strange discombobulating effect shown as thousands of different kinds of ethnicities, clothing, and hair styles all patchworked together, changing constantly, all mixed together randomly, this look itself would have been amazing if done as live action compositing. As it exists right now, it looks creepy and cool, and goes along with the floaty and pretty lame tracing style of the rest of the film.
If there are any other scenes like the "Alien with a thousand eyes" that were cut, please add them, because this film needs to get trippier by a long shot, and that scene was really funny, made use of the animation technique, and worked well with the characters. Please make this film stranger if you can, because it needs that in my opinion.
I love animated films, and this is a film that I can truly say is destroyed by its own process.
I hope that Richard Linklater does a cut of this film as just the edited DV footage and puts that on the DVD when its released, because that will actually be the film I watch again, and am most interested in seeing.
End Spoilers:
I wanted to like this, but ended up really just wanting to forget it all together, just like the two Matrix sequels, LXG, and Brothers Grimm. If you use this, call me MegaSwarm
And one more that really likes it, unlike the above... Last one!
Harry!
Just saw the Richard Linklater directed A SCANNER DARKLY last night over at the Arclight in Los Angeles. I saw the preview like, what, over nine months ago? Then the thing just fell off the radar. Anyway, I guess the pic is being distributed by some artsy sub company of Universal. Whatever. Anyway, point being, I am a huge Philip K. Dick fan and likewise feel that Blade Runner is the ultimate. Phil Dick's stories are not conducive to the Michael Bay Island type of Matrix extravaganza that really should make you feel like throwing in a Scwarzenegger, and that's probably a good thing. Fans of the Dick book (can I say that?) will be pleased to include A SCANNER DARKLY into the PKD family of films, although those not familiar with them (or the books) will be more than a little lost, most likely.
The film is done with that crazy rotoscoped animation much in the style of that one movie (Waking Life?), and to the effect of washing everything over in the movie with a surreal psychedelic morning after kind of feel. What is interesting to note, at least it seemed to me, that in order to not go overboard with the animation, they would tweak it here and there to make it either more or less subtle where needed. Watching a whole movie like this could have been a headache, but in this case it was a joy.
The story (sans spoilers) concerns a not-too-distant-in-the future undercover drug enforcement agent Bob Arctor(Keanu Reeves), and his dealings in the underworld of 21st Century Southern California (Yeay Anaheim!). To his dismay and the audiences delight, Arctor's path crosses the likes of many swarthy and mindnumbed individuals (Robert Downey, Jr., Woody Harrelson, Slater from Dazed and Confused) being burnt out on a new kind of psychedelic fad drug, "Substance D". The Director, Rich Linklater (Dazed and Confused, School of Rock) pays homage to Phil Dick by making this very nearly the best on screen adaptation of one of his works.
I still say Blade Runner is a better movie, but this one is actually closer to the book. Needless to say, the movie (although without final sound and edits) is a sheer joy, an absolute trip and thrill to be engaged in. Definitely not the type of movie for people who want their bullets spoonfed to them (?), but absolutely for the people who want to experience something new, tripped out, fun and just plain weird. I loved it.
P.S. When you see it, keep an eye out for the Voight-Kampf...its in there.
Never written a review before, but you can call me...
THE IMPERIAL PIMP
