Reviewing The Situation - Waking Life
Man, I love Richard Linklater. Boy, do I loathe Waking Life.
First things first, I'm a big Richard Linklater fan. And I'm a big fan of animation, and as you know, initially the big talking point about Waking Life was its innovative animation. Shooting scenes initially on video, Linklater subsequently painted over them using Rotoscope technology similar to that used by Ralph Bakshi for his version of Lord Of The Rings. The end product is a film that's visually dazzling, if not genuinely ground-breaking.
And to what end does Linklater use this technique? To introduce us to people you'd contract diseases to avoid. Seriously, you'll find more self-involvement and cod philosophising here than in all the world's coffee houses.
Worse still, most of the nonsense is spouted by people we liked in Linklater's earlier movies. And this is the film's real failing - the director's inability to leave his previous pictures alone.
For fans of Dazed & Confused, Wiley Wiggins is frozen in time, listening to Foghat after the night of his life. But thanks to Linklater, we now find him wandering around in a dream-like state, chatting to people you'd cheerfully take a chair to.
The same goes for the star-crossed couple from Before Sunrise, played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. That film works because we're left hoping they'll somehow get it together, and the two official sequels deliver on the promise of the original. Waking Life, however, destroys that magic at a stroke by showing the pair in bed contemplating what happens to you when you die.
Okay, so Waking Life isn’t irredeemably awful, but it is self-indulgent. And it also features a fevered cameo from Alex Jones which is a significant strike against any and all films that dare to give the bankrupt populist pug a platform.
But the real problem with Waking Life? The only thing more boring than people telling you about their dreams is a film about these very people indulging in this particular line of discussion.