A SCANNER DARKLY

A SCANNER DARKLY,  Richard Linklater, director, 2006

HOOK: This is not a stoner drug movie, not a stoner drug movie, not a stoner drug movie.

STORY: 300 hours of art work (painting over every frame) for each minute of film was needed to turn this movie into a graphic novel (as if members of this cast weren’t cartoonish enough).  

GOSSIP: Guess who Winona Ryder’s real life godfather was? Timothy Leary. Does that explain everything or what? 

JOHN: The format doesn’t really fit the internal conflict of the story’s characters, but the technology does go where no film has ever gone before, and the effect is somewhat mesmerizing. I think Downey Harrelson and Rory Cochrane have a little too much fun, and Keanu Reeves just seems to be pissed he isn’t in another film. My advice: Read the story instead.   

 GO GO (2 GOs out of four)

 SPANKY: I feel like I just escaped from “Polar Express.” This manic movie based on the Philip K. Dick story is guaranteed to give you a splitting headache. Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson are typecast as druggy nuts. Undercover cop Keanu Reeves is doing a surveillance on himself (how paranoid is that), and the interpolated rotoscoping animation makes Winona Ryder seem even more spacey, if possible. She suffers from aphenphosmphobia (fear of being touched). Too talkie, too darkly! Chasing your tail for an hour is more exciting.

“TWO PAWS DOWN” (1BARK out of four)

 KEEPER:  “Are you getting any cross-chatter between right and left brain hemispheres?”