Release Date:
Friday, October 19, 2001
Unless you consider 97 minutes of pseudo-intellectual name-dropping to be compelling, Waking Life fails to achieve anything other than looking cool. In some ways an animated rehash of Richard Linklaters 1991 effort, Slacker, Waking Life is neither as whimsical nor as funny as his earlier effort, while managing to be a whole lot more pretentious. The film serves up random bits of philosophy and tediously contrived rants as genuine profundity. Listening to an animated Ethan Hawke blather on about Timothy Leary is enough to make even the most diehard neo-hippie burn his collecection of Dead tapes and start clubbing baby seals.
Those that find existential philosophy interesting would be better served by reading some of the texts discussed and having their own inane conversations instead of sitting through this rambling tour of human banality.
Those that find existential philosophy interesting would be better served by reading some of the texts discussed and having their own inane conversations instead of sitting through this rambling tour of human banality.