3113
Hello Summer!
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2005
- Posts
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I don't know if anyone's interested in movie reviews--but I thought I'd post one as this is based on a book, in particular, a book by one of my fave sci-fi authors. I'm a Philip K. Dick fan...but I can't recommend this movie. It's not that the movie makers or actors have taken Philip's name in vain here. If anything, they've been quite faithful to his vision, style, themes, intent, etc. And the weird rotoscoping (anamation of live actors) actually works given the story: a tale about an undercover narc becoming addicted to a damaging futuristic drug, and becoming uncertain, as well, of whether he's the cop or the suspect or both.
The problem is with the material itself. There's a great deal of autobiographical material in this work and it all has to do with a time when PKD opened his home to drug addicts and other misfits--and took drugs himself. NOT something a paranoid schitzophernic should do. Rather like most movies about drug addicts, we spend a lot of time watching addicts doping themselves up and talking weird shit with other addicts. While the dialogue between the three paranoid druggies sounds absolutely real, and can be entertaining, funny and on-target with PKD's paranoid vision, it nonetheless sounds like it was lifted verbatum and this is problematic. You know how that is, a conversation engaging to the participants, but often tiring or annoying to outsiders. In short, PKD could have used an editor on this.
Robert Downey, jr. gets the best part and does the best job of keeping the viewer engaged.
Finally, the story itself has no "Third act"--it ends, pretty much, with a prologue. The one element of the story that might have proved interesting--and that we wait the whole movie to see--that of the Drug Rehibilitation center, is a quick coda.
So far, I've found Trainspotting to be one of the best movies about drug users. It has a lot of energy, weirdness, off-beat moments, different locations, etc. This movie has none of that. It has just conversations and questions, as all PKD stories do, the nature of reality.
At the end of the movie, I turned to my husband and said, "Don't take drugs." I imagine, at the time when it was written, this might well have been quite ground-breaking, a mix of insight into drug users, taking drugs and the culture of drug wars, but I don't know that it works so well now. The best I can say of it is that it's still PKD, and no one questions reality like PKD. His genius is there, but it's rather lost in the soup. That's my humble opinion of the film anyway.
The problem is with the material itself. There's a great deal of autobiographical material in this work and it all has to do with a time when PKD opened his home to drug addicts and other misfits--and took drugs himself. NOT something a paranoid schitzophernic should do. Rather like most movies about drug addicts, we spend a lot of time watching addicts doping themselves up and talking weird shit with other addicts. While the dialogue between the three paranoid druggies sounds absolutely real, and can be entertaining, funny and on-target with PKD's paranoid vision, it nonetheless sounds like it was lifted verbatum and this is problematic. You know how that is, a conversation engaging to the participants, but often tiring or annoying to outsiders. In short, PKD could have used an editor on this.
Robert Downey, jr. gets the best part and does the best job of keeping the viewer engaged.
Finally, the story itself has no "Third act"--it ends, pretty much, with a prologue. The one element of the story that might have proved interesting--and that we wait the whole movie to see--that of the Drug Rehibilitation center, is a quick coda.
So far, I've found Trainspotting to be one of the best movies about drug users. It has a lot of energy, weirdness, off-beat moments, different locations, etc. This movie has none of that. It has just conversations and questions, as all PKD stories do, the nature of reality.
At the end of the movie, I turned to my husband and said, "Don't take drugs." I imagine, at the time when it was written, this might well have been quite ground-breaking, a mix of insight into drug users, taking drugs and the culture of drug wars, but I don't know that it works so well now. The best I can say of it is that it's still PKD, and no one questions reality like PKD. His genius is there, but it's rather lost in the soup. That's my humble opinion of the film anyway.
