Too much of everything

Strong and Moving!

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It's seven years in the future. The country is struggling with 20% of the population addicted to a new drug Substance D. In Anaheim, Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is an undercover agent who wears a scramble suit which changes his appearance like a chameleon. The drug war is supported by private corporation New Path. Bob is himself addicted and starting to lose his mind.This is an unique movie of an original style. The rotorscoping animation style is hypnotic. It's not for everybody. It can be maddening to watch as the madness of this world can infect the audience. It's a visually weird movie. It gets tiring to watch. It may be better as an animated short than a full-length feature. The talkative story can also wear out its welcome.

I first saw this film in 2007 when I hired it from my now-defunct local Blockbuster because I was interested in seeing what the rotoscoping technique looked like. I bought the DVD a year later. Upon seeing it, I was very impressed with the graphics and animation because they were rather lifelike due to them being traced over live-action footage. The funny thing about this film is that it was set seven years from its year of release (2006), thus making it take place in, wait for it... 2013 (although this fact may seem dated in many years to come).As well as the graphics and animation style, the other positive aspects are the well-known cast of Keanu Reeves, Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and Robert Downey Jr, although to me Rory Cochrane is a lesser-known addition to the cast since I hadn't heard of him prior to seeing this film. In spite of this, he played a decent Charles Freck but Reeves as Bob/Fred/Bruce and Ryder as Donna/Hank/Audrey were the standouts while Downey Jr was comical as James Barris. The dialogue had a fine mix of darkness, poignancy and humour while a few of the visuals were bizarre (a policeman shooting Freck's head off in his imagination and Freck encountering an alien-like creature with multiple eyes later on in the film) in a good way. I also liked the animation and appearance of the scramble suits. The story was hard to follow at times, but I know for sure its basic premise was Arctor being addicted to Substance D and eventually going to rehab under the name of Bruce.All in all, this is a visual treat that inspired me to make my own short rotoscoped film as part of my animation course at university. To summarise, the strongest points were the cast, the dialogue, animation and graphics. 8/10.

This film is based on a book by Philip K. Dick. Now I haven't read any of his books yet but from what I heard this is a solid adaptation. And this is a pretty darn good conspiracy film about a guy coping with his surroundings and a drug called Substance D. A drug that causes bizarre hallucination and makes them go all schizo and paranoid. It's basically a film that might be difficult to comprehend at first but you get use to it and it all makes clear to a degree. Keanu Reeves plays a guy named Bob Arctor who goes by other aliases. Now I don't think Keanu Reeves is a brilliant actor but he usually fits the roles he is given and in this case just perfectly. Keanu is really good at playing these confused and apathetic roles. Just about everyone is right for the roles they were given for this film. Robert Downey, Jr. is good at playing these pedantic and slightly weird characters and he nails it in this. Woody Harrelson is alright in this. But the guy that really nails it in this is Rory Cochrane, who is this jumpy, twitchy and overly paranoid character. And Rorly plays him flawlessly. Winona Ryder is also in this but felt that a bunch of other actresses could have played her role. When it comes down to it, it's the interactions between these characters that is the primary focus. And the conversations and the direction is clever and sometimes dumb(in a good way) but mostly amusing. This movie is shot with real actors but rendered into animation. Which adds to the weirdness of this film and bring out more of that trippy feel while it being cool and all. But wondered why they picked this subtle movie to do that in. Cause if they could have picked a story with explosions, car chases and other special effects and just used animation. It would have saved themselves a lot of budget and still could have gotten away with it in the audiences eyes. Although the animation rendering works in this film and doesn't seem like a gimmick. And even has couple of messages that can keep the audiences that watch this film thinking. And it's clever with it's execution, despite a twist when it hits I wondered how I could have missed that. Overall this is a good sci-fi conspiracy film that is well blended together. It's just a shame this film bombed at the box office.7.4/10

I must admit I was intrigued by the 7.5 rating on IMDb and since it was on HBO (which I already get) I figures why not. The whole "Cartoon" aspect of the movie I guess added to the whole drug aspect to it, but honestly I was bored through most of it, and sadly rather unfulfilled by the ending as well. So all in all a bomb for me and not in the good sense… I'm left thinking that if I might have been high on something (which I gave up years ago) or drunk off my ass (which I wasn't) I might have enjoyed this more, but sober I found this movie again rather dull and more or less uneventful. The thing is there wasn't really much that surprised me either and I was hoping for this "Ah ha" moment, which unfortunately never came, least not for me. I rate this as 3 stars, 1 obviously being the minimum. So the +1 was for it's originality of the whole psychedelic cartoon aspect which was fitting for the subject matter of the film, the other +1 was for that whole scene when the car broke down which reminded me of many years ago of getting wasted with friends and making up the weirdest and dumbest stuff, so that bit cracked me up.Other than those two aspects again I found the film drawn out, dull and worst of all non entertaining. And I've seen some druggie movies that I've liked, so it's not like the subject matter bored me, just the overall movie itself. Obviously others have gotten something more out of this than I have for it to have gotten such a decent rating, but if anything it proves to me that you cannot trust the ratings