Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke in "Waking Life."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a: Stars: Wiley Wiggins Director: Richard Linklater Rated: R, with strong profanity Length: 97 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(November 16, 2001) -- Despite its title, Waking Life is one big snooze.

A non-narrative exploration of existential thought, Richard Linklater's film is little more than an extravagant 97-minute contemplation of one's navel.

An unnamed character simply wanders through town, running into folks who take turns spouting their philosophies of life, in exactly the way people never do in real life.

And when it's over, you're left with such profundities as "Dream is destiny" and "There's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity."

Yeah, well, life makes you itch, and then you die.

On the other hand, Waking Life can't be totally dismissed, if only because of its offbeat and original film technique: It's a feature-length cartoon for adults -- and it looks like no cartoon you've ever seen before.

Linklater has taken the tried-and-true animation of rotoscoping and given it a new twist. In rotoscoping, live actors are filmed, then animators copy over the live action with paint and ink, creating a psuedo-cartoon.

But Linklater and his animators take the process a step further by frequently adding creative elements. Sometimes it's the choice of unusual colors; sometimes it's exaggerations of facial features or the addition of nonrealistic cartoon elements. There's little consistency among the many characters in the film.

In one case, a character says "I'd rather be a gear in a big deterministic physical machine than just some random swerving," and his face is shaped like a machine gear.

It's also fine to spot a few familiar faces beneath the animation paint and ink, including Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Wiley Wiggins, Steven Soderbergh and Linklater himself.

But the charm of the unusual animation isn't enough to hold our interest over an hour-and-a-half of platitudes and pontification.

And for reasons I can't fathom, the animated backgrounds often move slightly, in waves, as though the land-based saga were taking place on a sailing ship. The movement made me slightly queasy.

But even more unsettling is the absence of a story -- or characters we can get to know.

As one guy says, "There's no story. It's just people, gestures, moments, bits of rapture, fleeting emotions. In short, the greatest story ever told."

I think not.