Movie Review #22: Waking Life

I was suppose to review Shark Tale this week as the final installment of the March Animation Month but I never got around to watching it. Instead, I watched Waking Life (2001) starring Wiley Wiggins and written and directed by Richard Linklater.

This film is a very unique endeavour. This style of animation is called “rotoscope”. This means that the film is all shot live action and then animators come and draw over the frames to create their animation. The Max Fleisher Studios animated their Superman cartoons this way in the 30s. Waking Life, however, changes the style of drawing in every scene. From cartoony to realistic to abstract, the sudden changes are interesting to watch but are distracting to the story as one finds themselves concentrating on what the main character currently looks like.

The story is of Wiley Wiggins as he searches for answers on life, existence and reality. “Are we sleep-walking through our waking state or wake-walking through our dreams?” He asks many existential and philosophical questions to various people he meets during his day. This plot is slow and the peoples’ responses get too convoluted for my tastes. I like movies that make you think and I also like having existential conversations once in a while, but this movie was too over my head. It became a pain to watch. It is, however a ground-breaking film in terms of animation.

Until next time,
Toast!