A Scanner Darkly

So when I went on Thursday to go see A Scanner Darkly, a pair of older ladies ahead of me in line apparently thought they were going to see An Inconvenient Truth, since that's what they were talking about in line and they didn't seem to be of the target demographic for A Scanner Darkly.

The nice girl at the snack counter had to tell them that thye had come at the wrong time and they could get their money back if they wanted or just come back later ,but they decided to stay anyway. I told the girl she shouldn't have said anything, that if they had come expecting a chilling vision of the future it's not like they'd leave disappointed.

The movie itself was pretty talk-y, and it made you hope that someone will use the animation technique for greater effect in a higher budget film soon. But at least Richard Linklater had better starting material with the Philip K. Dick story than his indulgent, ADD philosophizing of Waking Life.

Keanu Reeves wasn't offensively bad, so that's a relief. Robert Downey Junior was the hilight of the film, and Woody Harrelson just likes talking like a stoner in front of a camera. There were a few too many Cheech & Chong in a post-apolyptic world moments, and it felt cheap when they could have been advancing the story.

Still worth watching, though, and any stab at real science fiction is a welcome one in today's movie industry. I definitely will get it when it comes out on DVD for any extras / making of bits, the best part of the Waking Life DVD was seeing the artists draw over live footage on costom Apple software and tablets.