In order to "get" "Waking Life," you have to think of it less as a movie than as a philosophy lecture that's been animated. Fortunately, this film is a whole lot more interesting and fun than that may make it sound.
Sure, there are some who find a meditative, animated/live-action exercise a pretentious, headache-inducing waste of time. But those with open minds will be rewarded with one of the most imaginatively loopy, wildly original cinematic experiences they've seen all year. (The "animated/live-action" description means the film was originally shot with digital recorders, then the images and actors were "drawn over" by artists using digital animation programs.)
It's difficult to say if "Waking Life" really has a plot, though it does consistently follow one character, an unnamed dreamer (the voice and character of Wiley Wiggins, from "Dazed and Confused").
He's trying to wake up, after having a nightmare in which he's been run down by a car. But instead, he finds himself floating over the city, encountering others who share with him their opinions about the meaning of existence and dreams.
Much of what occurs here defies easy description, except to say that it's unlike anything you've seen before. Obviously, a lot of the praise for its success must go to writer-director Richard Linklater, from whose imagination it came. However, credit should also go to art director Bob Sabiston and a talented team of artists, whose styles vary dramatically (some of it is impressionistic, other parts expressionist and still others abstract), depending on the characters being shown and the theories they espouse.
Of course, the alternately jazzy and classical score by Glover Gill and the Tosca Tango Orchestra helps set the proper tone, and there's also a certain delight in seeing actors reprise their roles from other Linklater films — such as Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy ("Before Sunrise"), Nicky Katt and Adam Goldberg ("Dazed and Confused"), and Louis Mackey (the "Old Anarchist" from "Slacker"). (Linklater himself pops up in the opening scene, helping propel Wiggins on his dream journey, and again in the closing scene, where he helps end it.)
"Waking Life" is rated R for brief use of strong profanity (in just one scene) and crude sexual slang terms (ditto), brief violence and gore (an animated shooting), as well as some brief drug content (discussion and images). Running time: 97 minutes.
E-MAIL: jeff@desnews.com