Rating: 
Summary: Did You Like Slacker?
Review: This movie is like Slacker, except the footage has been animated over to give it an unwordly--rather--a "subconsciously" appearance. The story deals with a person travelling through a dream world, witnessing other dream folk who are talking philosophy in the midst of a variety of moving settings.Like Slacker, Waking Life is quirky and fascinating and realistically funny. It makes you think, if that doesn't sound too quasi-intellectual of me to say. You can watch it over and over, even if all you do is appreciate the haunting like-jazz soundtrack. Or maybe it is jazz, I don't know. I'm just a layman who dug the movie. (The music reminded me of Naked Lunch's soundtrack, but not as chaotic.) Our protagonist begins to realize he's dreaming but can't wake up, an engaging concept. I won't give away the whole movie, but that's the gist of it. He's trying to gain control over his mise-en-scene, most of all make sense of it. This movie is a mental ride of concepts and attitudes, and I can't recommend it enough. To get into the flick, you first might have to put your Mikey hat on, as though you were trying Life Cereal for the first time, but in the end you're bound to hear your friend's declare, "He likes it! He likes it! Hey, Mikey. . .!"
Rating:
Summary: A Genuine Work of Art - Don't be decieved by the minnows
Review: This film is a work of genius....therefore many people will fail to appreciate its true artistry, and will only evaluate it at the level of their own sophistication. To be frank...it is clear to me that most of the reviews I have read on this page are missing what is essential.Anyone using words like 'weird', 'trippy','pretentious','intellectual',is making a very superficial assessment of the substance of this film. In order to run this software, you should perhaps check that your own operating system is in order. One way of doing this is by asking what each image signifies....the musicians, the child hanging onto the car's door handle, the train, the portrait, the dancers, the body in space etc etc etc. We live in a culture of intellectualism...people coming at you with words and opinions. This is the context in which the film is set...but it is not what the film is about. Intellectualism is repulsive, but it is what modern human beings must contend with, overcome. Likewise you are asked to see through the intellectualism of this film in order to understand what it is actually communicating. Most films are 'fantastic', this film is about reality. Reality is for those who are dedicated to walking the path which leads from birth through death into life. Anyone who has had this experience will be in a position to speak about it. Linklater clearly is. Don't write off this film...its worth exploring. Every image is crafted, it contains archetypal signs, seek and you shall find. 'Dream is destiny' ....if you want to wake up, you probably will.
Rating:
Summary: I'm not the only one!
Review: First of all you have to see this more than once! The first three times I saw this movie I ended up dreaming, it really is not for everyone. So the other night out of no where I popped this into my VCR expecting not to make it through again but wow! This time without trying I compleatly understood it all. I got so excited I have acctually decided to do my own personal project on it.(this is only for my own enrichment).
Honestly I really think most people would not be capable of seeing this flick for what it really is (mindblowing). It is also one of those movies that if you cannot appriciate than your missing the message all together, Waking Life is absoulutly brilliant. I have never been so impressed with the combination of art and music in anything I have ever seen. There are a lot of people that will compleatly dissagree with me on this and I am not sure those are people that I would want for close friends.
I also have a tip for anyone that does see this: don't try to analize every scene, it will make your head hurt. This movie follows each scene in a very peticular order and it really is not as disorganized as it first appears. Also, the art and the music are very much a part of this movie, if you notice when Wiley feels confused the art follows; same for when he has moments of understanding and clarity. it really does all make sense. There is little need for many more words, I'm glad I got a chance to place this review. Love for all, J.
Rating: 
Summary: A mixed bag, but not without merit
Review: "Waking Life" is not quite an experimental film, though that's where its heart is. Essentially a low-budget Richard Linklater film given a digital animation makeover, "Life" takes on metaphysics, dream interpretation, Joseph Campbell, film criticism, and I'm sure several other grad school subjects as well. It steadfastly refuses to adhere to the "show it, don't tell it " theory of screenwriting, so much so that "My Dinner With Andre" begins to look like a Jerry Bruckheimer project in comparison. The rotoscoped animation (they actually filmed actors live and traced them frame by frame) is a mixture of styles, with some shots being intentionally primitive, and some achieving a very eerie, stylized realism. Often it is quite gorgeous too look at, but sometimes there's a brownian shifting of backgrounds and figures within the frame that can be rather jarring (maybe it comes from rotoscoping hand-held camera work, but sometimes it happens in what appear to be static scenes, suggesting that it is an animator's choice). So, to recommend it? That's a hard question. I did enjoy it, and I think I will discover interesting things that I didn't catch in initial viewings, but I have a feeling that the audience for this film is extremely limited. It's not even a good taste/bad taste issue-I think as many serious art film fans will find this as tedious as the mainstream crowd. It does tend to meander around without a true center, but there are occasions, such as late in the film, when the main character tries to change his dream, that are really well written and even (almost) dramatic. I'd say if you like Linklater's other films, you should have a good time with this. Likewise, if you are predisposed to enjoy lofty discussions with friends this might be for you. It's bargain-basement cheap for a DVD, so it won't set you back too much, and it has some nice extras (comentaries, shorts, and a demonstration of the digital rotoscoping process, for the curious). If you insist on strong plots and active characters, though, consider yourself warned.
Rating: 
Summary: It's just not interesting.
Review: I reviewed this film once and slung several insults, calling it pretentious and disappointing to 'an intellectual like myself'. A reviewer would have been right to give my own review a low grade for its hypocrisy, so upon finding that review of mine, I am rewriting. This review won't be helpful, either, because I have nothing but contempt for the adoration this film receives. I'll save the name-calling and instead say only that there is absolutely nothing of interest in this film. The monologues and conversations contained here are precisely of the sort that I turn to film, or to genuinely curious people, to avoid. Were they presented for the purpose of comedy, or for the speakers to learn something, anything from each other, I might have been curious to stay tuned for what would 'happen next'. Instead, this sprawling film meanders along to nowhere in particular. I don't mind having to work to follow a film's substantial dialogue, but I expect a reward. What I got was a character floating away after living the most boring day imaginable.
Rating: 
Summary: Good sophomore text.
Review: This is a beguiling film, although it could be accused of instilling a sense of 'metaphysical nausea' (as one critic put it) in its viewers. The sheer breadth and depth of the theory expounded on (ranging from the thought-provoking to the truly banal) militates against any useful critique of the film: no film of a length 2 1/2 hours could possibly hope to cover everything in any remote conception of what could be termed 'sufficient detail'. The advanced rotoscoping techniques yield tremendous didvidends, with the art work enhancing instead of literalizing the visuals: crucial in a film with such unique pretensions. Expands on director Linklater's free form style along with the likes of 'Slacker' and 'Dazed and Confused', although this film is in a completely different league. Definately worth a watch.
Rating: 
Summary: pseudo-intellectual bore
Review: Waking Life contains plenty of beautiful artwork, which is why I gave it two stars instead of one. But what has the potential to be an intellectually stimulating movie turns out to be a pseudo-intellectual bore. All of the ideas brought up and examined throughout this piece are unoriginal pop-culture ravings, probably written by a film student who has never read a philosophy book in his life but believes himself to be enlightened due to all the pot he smokes. At least that's the impression I got. I see the writer of this film as an intellectual equivalent of the character Luzhin, from Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment", a fool who attempts to impress people by memorizing supposedly intelligent, long quotes, and then repeating those quotes to others. Waking life examines modern science, but doesn't question its premises. It brings up the issue of religion, but rather than questioning religion, the film attempts to combine what is popularly believed in religion with what is popularly believed in science without justification. Perhaps if you're in junior high and have brain damage, this film might get you thinking.
Rating:
Summary: A movie for the Unthinking Masses
Review: If you're impressed by relentless name-dropping, superfiscial postulation, and overstimulating your eyes to the point of having a headache, then perhaps this movie is for you. In which case, you should just stop reading right now and go out and buy this movie... Heck! Buy two or three copies just to get them off the shelf! At best, this movie was like a droning college philosophy teacher, at worst like a romantic teenager. From simply stating common sense to academic-esque name-dropping, _Waking Life_ only produces a sense of frustration at how pretensious a movie can really be.
...And this isn't even getting into the animation. At first, I'll admit, I too thought this was a really visually beautiful movie (at times it is), but after a while the animation began to grate at me as much as the "philosophy" ... With the ever-swirling, ever-morphing visuals, fifteen or twenty minutes left me feeling as if I was drunk and trying to listen to a bunch of amateurs (for the most part) blather on and on about... dreams, I suppose... Experience?... I must say that I was almost wholey distracted from the monologues and dialogues by the overstimulation on the screen.
In the long run, I don't think that I gained a single positive thing from this movie (other than knowing yet another movie that I should not watch again and gaining the opportunity to inform others about it). Richard Linklater's earlier movie "Slackers" to me was much the same, and yet much better in that it had a much lower level of pretension... probably b/c he wasn't trying to impress us with his animating abilities and sense of aesthetic. This is a movie for the unthinking masses. I say philosophy should be more engaging than _Waking Life_ is capable of being. Not once was I inspired into my own train of thought during this entire movie. I felt as if I was being told a bunch of silly ideas about what dreams are and what reality and experience are, rather than being asked to think them out for myself. In my experience, it is (more or less) the same fault in most traditional philosophy courses. I'm telling you, there's a lot out there that does VERY WELL what _Waking Life_ only pretends to be able to do:
If you are after philosophy, there are **what??** 2400 years of great philosophical readings from Plato to the _Bible_ to Darwin to Nietzsche to Freud to Irigaray...
If you're into great animation, try checking out anything by Hayao Miyazaki...
If it's dreams you're into, then there's _Akira Kurosawa's Dreams_, or _The Book of Dreams_ by Jack Kerouac...
Or if it's visual stimulation you're after, take a walk through any art museum, or watch any movie by Kurosawa, Bergman or Fellini... The moral of the story? If I was surrounded by a bunch of friends that were as obsessed with this movie as many people are... Then I would reconsider who I want to be my friends!
Rating:
Summary: Waking Thought
Review: Waking Life is the arguably revolutionary new film from Indie wonderboy director Richard Linklater. What is undeniably revolutionary is this film's method of animation, which was done after shooting film of live actors. The entire film has the feel of a moving surrealist painting.
What is arguably revolutionary is the content of the film itself. An unnamed dreamer (played by Wiley Wiggins) wonders through conversation after conversation and meets character after character as he tries to figure out if he's awake or dreaming, and if he's dreaming, how to wake up.
This film, however, is not about plot. Wiggins for the most part is content to just sit and absorb whatever philosophy that's being bestowed upon him, as each scene is less a conversation then a collection of monologues.
This is a film of philosophical wandering. An existential kind of Alice in Wonderland. While some of the dialouge is equally enthralling and thought provoking, other segments amount to just tired pretentiousness. This is a fine film, but is one that exits to create thought, rather then to help people escape it.
Rating:
Summary: Go Along for the Ride
Review: Don't try to figure anything out for awhile. Do what us Americans have so much trouble doing...just go along for the ride for a bit, don't try to "make" this movie into anything. It will converge...I promise! Allow your mind to absorb, disagree, agree, digest, conjest, injest...just ALLOW. All that applies to not only the subject matter, but the manner in which its subjected. When it comes to the sometimes bumpy, sea-sick quality to the animation, be patient; it will become smooth sailing soon (and you won't even notice at which exact point it happens!).
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