I want a new drug...

Well, it turns out it is impossible to resist going for the somewhat lame forced pun and/or other movie reference when coming up with a Blog post title to review a movie. At heart, we are all amateur newspaper editors looking for a good by-line. When the Daily Show is at their best, nobody does it better.


Turns out it is also impossible to resist an animated Richard Linklater adaptation of a Philip K. Dick sci-fi story sporting some name actors and intriguing plot twists. Even though it is possible to see this for what it is from a mile away, even though we should now that this movie goes hand-in-hand with computer games, high school, and maybe pot use as well, I still can't help thinking 'I want to see that' every time we pass by the box at Blockbuster.

A little something we should all know by now: JP is a sucker for the trailer. That insidious, corrupting, deceitful, Hollywood marketing device that slaps enough make-up on a turd of a movie to make it look good for all of 90 seconds can land me hook, line, and sinker. I see this preview, and I want to see this movie. I wanted to see Pearl Harbor. I wanted to see DaVinci Code. I want to see that Kevin Costner-Ashton-Snow Patrol Rescue worker movie, I bite at romantic comedies with ridiculous premises and actions/suspense movies with even more ridiculous premises. I buy into big-name actors even if they aren't in good things because I want to see them on screen. I will watch the big budget movie that cost $100Billion (X-Men, Day After Tomorrow) just to see what they did with it. See, I have taste and a refined cultural appreciation for artfully made films, I just can't help myself at enjoying (or not enjoying, but wanting to see it anyway) all manner of bad/flawed/brainless/derivative/soulless Hollywood garbage out of pure, naive, sycophantic Hollywood-worship.

So of course we got Scanner Darkly, and even though it might not have been the best time (a Saturday morning, perhaps?) we sunk a whole Monday evening into it. E was not amused. I, on the other hand, was slightly amused but ultimately disappointed. This movie was not without it's redeeming qualities. I mean, people always like to trash these movies I pick and say they are all miserable and time-wasting and crap, which is not to be ignored, but they forget the pleasure of it. Otherwise I wouldn't rent them. I mean I'm not fucking stupid. X-men, Fearless, Running Scared, Transformers, the new Bond, the new Rocky- these movies can be a lot of fun if you give in and let yourself enjoy them, and Scanner Darkly was not without redeemable qualities.


Maybe it would have been better if I had read the book, because despite the effort to explain things, most notably how this future world made it possible to both track and spy on everyone and completely obscure your identity to everyone, I was constantly in the dark as to what the rules and assumptions were. In particular, the role and function of the giant corporation and the role and function of the government (as represented by the police department) was never clearly explained, so in the end when the predictable twist (that the evil corporation is both selling substance D and marketing the treatment for addiction all while usurping state power and restricting civil liberties in the name of national health crisis) is revealed we can't figure out how it all pieced together, even if we get the eventual point. How can you work for a company and they not know who you are (even though they did)?

Themes of dystopian, Orwellian future, addiction, and paranoia are presented, and while sometimes the characters motivations are not made clear (and they aren't supposed to be, due to drug-addled brains and aforementioned paranoia and plot turns) they are generally entertaining to watch. Harrelson and Downey Jr. in particular have an almost Hunter S Thompson- Dr. Gonzo dynamic going as they try to fuck with each other's drugged-out heads while not-quite in control of their own drugged-out heads. I was about to turn it off (and maybe I should have to save the Monday) when an extended WH/RD jr. exchange grabbed my interest and held on until we were beyond the point of no return.

ok, time to reign this runaway review in for a while. The plot was indeed basic, just one of a hundred gimmicky sci-fi ideas that PKD spun a book around in his career. We get the 100 minute treatment from dialog-and-animation loving Linkleter. Take it for what it's worth. The best scenes, like in all Linkleter films (Before Sunrise, Dazed and Confused) are the random conversations between a couple people.