Rating: 
Summary: Too much dialogue!
Review: While "Waking Life" is truly visually innovative, its animation is truly lost on the surplus of dialogue that fills the movie. The dream-like segues between conversations are certainly the high points of the film, if the hapless movie-goer can stay awake through the proselytizing, pretentious, overly trendy and post-modern pseudo-philosophy.
Rating: 
Summary: A Bit Hyped For The Academic Crowd (3 and a half really)
Review: The animation and style of this movie is very good, but I found the dialog over-intellectualized. There really is no significant plot. I fell asleep the two times I tried to watch this piece. Well crafted, but philosophically redundent to me.
As for the animation, it is really great! I found it interesting, what I remember of it!
Rating:
Summary: Wake Up
Review: Although I found the dialog in this film to be intriguing and the half animated cinematography to be inovative, this made for an incredibley boring movie that really never panned out to any real conclution. Sorry, but I saw no real substance to this movie despite all its great conversation pieces.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic...it has it all.
Review: Ok if you are looking for a romance, or possibly something intrigingly intellectually stimulating here you have it. F=great conversation starts and a dvd must have.
Rating:
Summary: Brain Food
Review: Very thought provoking.
The movie is a string of vignettes linked by a low-key but interesting plot. The vignettes are each "bite-sized" monologues or dialogues musing on the nature of life, death, free will, creativity, and existence. They are all done with a sense of humor, respect, and compassion. No one is "right" or "wrong"; thoughts are simply presented by the thinker. React and absorb what you will.
I saw this one night, and within three hours of waking the next morning, bought two copies, one for myself, one as a gift. I watched it twice the first weekend.
If you like to think when you watch a movie, or just to sit and think, this is a great movie to watch many times.
Content aside, the music is a very nice Jazz / Swing collection. It makes great background music, only dominating the scene on the few scenes when it's supposed to be in the forefront. The animation style is interesting. It can take a bit to get used to everything being in motion, but I found I became accustomed to that quickly.
Rating: 
Summary: A feast for your eyes
Review: The first half of the movie is like being trapped in a college coffee house discussion of philosphy. Ideas that we have all heard before ranted on and on. Interesting at first but after an hour I was gettins somewhat annoyed, luckily the animation is enough to keep you entertained. Some of the animation is a little choppy in parts, but that might have been intended. The animation styles change throughout the movie giving it a strange but effective painterly feel. A large team of animators worked on this film, understandibly, and that is part of the appeal, if you don't like what is being said, or the annimation style, you can just wait five or ten minutes and another style of annimation will take over. This is a truly original film about lucid dreams...a hot topic in the world of cinema. Vannila sky is another film that dealt with the idea of lucid dreams, however waking life makes the lucid dream last the entire movie. This film is a huge accomplishment for director Richard Linkliter (Dazed and Confused, and Slacker), I can't wait to see what he's cooking up next. I highly reccomend this film for its visual appeal, if you are into those artsy type movies. You can even watch with the volume on mute and still enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: A triumph
Review: Richard Linklater is one of the great independent directors working today. No matter what you think of his work, you cannot deny that he is an original voice. I don't like all his movies, but I invariably look forward to trying out each new one. Waking Life is one of the good ones. To start with, its very existence is a sign of this man's imagination. He films the whole thing and edits it into a feature. Now at this point, most directors would consider their film finished. But not Rick Linklater. No, now he gives it to Bob Sabiston at LineResearch to totally cover over with rotoscoping animation using Sabiston's own software. So, basically, he's made two films in one. And we're the luckier for it. If you've seen Slacker, you'll be familiar with the style. In that film, one scene blends into another through the use a minor character from one scene (often no more than a walk-on) becoming the focus of the next scene. Well, here the blend is not so logical. Several scenes appear to be dreams from which our hero (played by Wiley Wiggins from Dazed and Confused) awakens at the end. Only even his awakening appears to be part of the dream. Eventually, he realizes that he is not really waking up, and this begins to disturb him. (How to tell when you're dreaming--and make the most of it--becomes the subject of one conversation.) But he continues to meet up with people, often trying to interrupt their monologues with his own questions about his problem. Until he finally runs into a guy playing pinball (Linklater) who tells him simply to "wake up." But does he? Animating this film was the best idea Linklater had. Often one's mind wanders during these characters' monologues (several of them just aren't that interesting), but the animation surrounding them keeps your interest. It not only saves the film, but makes it better. It transcends itself. Instead of becoming Slacker meets My Dinner with Andre, it turns into art--that rarest of creatures, cinematic art. Conversations that would be as dull as a dormitory-kitchen knife are enlivened. Concepts not understood become graspable through the use of illustrative drawings. Even the actors themselves (primarily amateurs including several professors from the University of Texas at Austin) are shown in a new light through the eyes of the animators. (One wonders what they thought of the animators' taking license with their likenesses.) My favorites were the "human interaction" scene, the "holy moment" scene, the story told in the bark, and the above "pinball" scene, where Linklater tells the film's most interesting story about Phillip K. Dick's discovery after writing one of his novels. Have your own "holy moment" and immerse yourself in the dream world of Waking Life. (Note on the DVD: This baby is loaded. Making ofs, interviews, several commentaries, and a very compelling animated short film called "Snack and Drink" featuring an autistic boy. Very educational regarding the process of bringing this movie through its paces and very entertaining as well. Well worth the price.)
Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous Art, Unoriginal and Affected Ideas
Review: This DVD is worth owning if only for the gorgeous animation. Many of the scenes have eerie trance-like sequences that remind you of Chagall. It's a perfect way for Linklater to make an interesting film, considering his fondness for street-philosophizing. So it's too bad that the dialogues (mostly monologues, actually) contain ideas that sound like regurgitated musings of discontented grad students gathered at a cafe. It's no way to drive a film. I'm not a proponent of 'plot-must-drive-the-film', but the ideas expressed in this film are unoriginal and even worse, highly stilted and formalized. Nevertheless, the film world needs more Linklaters who are unwilling to bend to the confinements of the Hollywood standards. It's just a shame that this movie, for all that it could have been, turned out to be an exercise in gab expressionism. If you are a stoner philosopher extraordinaire, this disc is a must-buy. If not, this film is rent-worthy.
Rating:
Summary: don't take it so seriously
Review: Well, I didn't bother wading through all 126 reviews, but I read a good many of them, and it seems to me that people fall into one of two camps: either they hate "Waking Life" because it's pretentious, or they love it because it's thought provoking. I think there's something to be said for each of these views. There is a whole lot of philosophizing going on here - some of it is profound, and some of it is BS - just like life. And, also like life, it's up to YOU to decide which is which! I wouldn't assume that any of what comes out of the characters' mouths are Linklater's pet ideas - characters are characters, and the filmaker may or may not agree with what they are saying. As for the animation, I thought it was pretty cool. It's a real mixed bag though - you might like some segments and not like others. But I'm kind of surprised that anyone would find it boring - I would never say that. "Waking Life" is a fun movie.
Rating:
Summary: I think, therefore I am
Review: You know where this movie is headed as soon as the protagonist climbs into the boat-car and figuratively crosses the river Styx. At first, the idea of a film painted over by computers, about the difference between dreams and reality, seemed a little juvenile to me. But Linklatter isn't trying to clonk us over the head with some profound insight--rather, he invites us into a dialogue about the everyday things we all wonder about, just as the protagonist is always in a dialogue with the ever-shifting cast of dream characters he encounters. The film will really and truly make you ponder the nature of what is usually agreed upon as "reality", or "waking life".
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