Not bad. I am not a huge fan of animated anything, my favorite type is Pixar-quality (think Monsters Inc.) but this was bearable. Of course it was live action with animation over it, so that might be why it was okay. I hadn’t read this PKD story, so the twists all surprised me. I didn’t like how they did the scramble suits, though. The “inside the suit” shots of Keanu Reeves were good, but the suits themselves were weird.

OK, so I didn’t go into this with high hopes: nearly every Dick story has been butchered. Mostly after his death, too.

But this worked. The visual style is alienating and confusing and underlines the feeling of complete dissociation that permeates Dick’s works. The camouflage suits that the undercover agents wear are brilliant.

Of the actors only Robert Downey jr. delivered an excellent perfomance, like a psychotic rehash of his character in Less Than Zero. The rest was, well, adequate. Actually Keanu (with his wooden ‘whoah’ style acting) worked pretty well for this role.

All in all this movie is not for everyone, but then again, neither are Dick’s novels. _{I also recommend smoking a joint before watching this movie.}

Philip K Dick, author of the books on which Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report were based – and A Scanner Darkly. To my shame, I’ve yet to read any of his work, but I have seen all of those films. Perhaps small wonder, then, that past experience and title meant I was expecting a sci-fi film when I went to see this. And in a way it is – a bleak future where freedom is replaced with constant surveillance – but it’s rather more a film about drugs. Which kind of threw me!

The main feature of the movie is, of course, the rotoscope animation. For that alone I’m glad I saw it, as it was new(-ish) and interesting. And the morals and story were thought-provoking. Near the end, I wondered if we were going to get a conclusion, or be left to make our own – it was that kind of tone – but I was pleasantly surprised to feel satisfied with where the film left off.

However, I just didn’t get all the drugs stuff. Long, rambling, disjointed ‘stoner’ conversations left me bored and wondering what on earth was going on, and I couldn’t even remotely like most of the characters. Some of the twists I saw coming, other made me feel I was clutching in the dark to figure out where they’d come from.

Interesting, but perhaps not my cup of tea entirely. Would still be interesting to see the DVD features about the rotoscope technique, however.

I had high hopes for Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly, talked up as the most (first?) faithful adaption of a Philip Dick novel to date and promisingly cast with Reeves, Ryder, Downey Jr, et al – not to mention the now celebrated rotoscoping effect used to give the picture an other-worldly edge.

In the event, most of those expectations were satisfied. Scanner certainly is the most faithful Dick adaptation so far – adhering fairly closely to the plot as well as the themes of the original novel – and the effects and acting were both impressive in a low-key way. In fact, there was a gratifying solidity in the movie’s juxtaposition of 70s-fried dope shenanigans and 21st-century surveillance state – a combination I’d found it a little hard to visualize when reading the novel.

That said, I was mildly disappointed that Linklater didn’t quite go the distance – although perhaps that really would have been too alienating for viewers who hadn’t read the book. The comedy was played a little too broadly, foregoing its potential to unsettle the viewer; Arctor’s mental disintegration was a bit abrupt and a bit too clinical; and the ending was so thoroughly foreshadowed as to have lost much of its power.

Still, it’s the best Dick adaptation we’re likely to see for a while …

Certainly an interesting movie to look at but the innovative “interpolated rotoscoping” (animation drawn over live action) is more than a visual gimmick: in realising a skewed – recognisable but not quite right – version of reality perfectly suited the material.

I was very grateful for the stoner comedy moments in A Scanner Darkly – I think it would have been too bitter a pill to swollow (sorry) for me, otherwise. Because there is no doubt that at its core this a bleak, tragic film. Moreover, its quite obviously based on very personal, very tortured experiences (in this case those of the author of the original book, Philip K. Dick).

This is a very worthwhile movie, and a very relevant one too.

Welcome to the surveillance society, where every move, thought, and expression is annotated, recorded, and evaluated by shape shifting law enforcers, to see if you are a threat to society.

Keanu plays an undercover cop sent deep into the field to befriend and betray a group of drug users addicted to Substance D. However, it’s never clear what Substance D is, or how it gets you high, people just take it to be taking it.

Meanwhile the authorities have declared a war on drugs and in turn an information war on culture. Dissenting voices are electro stunned and bundled into dark windowed vans; everyone has a hidden agenda. These druggie losers may in fact be the first link in a distribution chain that encompasses many in power. Or maybe not.

As with anything associated with Philip K Dick, reality slips and slides over itself and there are many twists and turns involving Winona Rider, Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson as the paranoid drug buddies from hell. The heightened rotoscoping technique (where live action shots are drawn over, creating unreal cartoon effects) adds to the sense that beneath the surface of our day to day existence there’s something more manipulated and sinister going on.

A Scanner Darkly is all about atmosphere, and to understand and enjoy it, you have to accept that people on drugs can be dull and meandering, as well as amusing and perceptive. Once you dive into this K-Hole of a movie, you just have to wait until the burn out and come down kicks in, and hope that you can make it through psych evaluation with your life intact at the other end.

A flawed but interesting film that comments on post-9/11 American society, and indicates how close we are to the dystopian world that Philip K Dick imagined in his worst nightmares.

The words really worked my imagination.

I really enjoyed the book and found the film to be disappointing. Visually the thing is interesting and the interaction of the characters and dialog is pretty good, in fact, I recognized a decent amount of the dialog from the book.

But this film lacks the suspense of the book, it kind of plods along until it reaches the end. There are a couple big plot twists in the book and they are there in the movie, but they’re really easy to miss. When the end comes, it feels important but I don’t think it’s entirely clear why.

Beyond the interesting eye-catching effects done with rotoscoping, this movie made me laugh, think and in the end, cry. The acting, casting and story were all great, I even liked Keanu in this. Definately a good take on drugs and drug culture in America today, without being preachy.