Director:
Richard Linklater
Starring:
Wiley Wiggins
Robert C. Solomon
Ethan Hawke
Julie Delpy
A bunch of really fucked up drawings
And Bill Wise as Boat Car Guy
I'd popped it in after I finished watching Fight Club for the first time in years. I was surprised to see I still loved Fight Club after all those rewatches and all that time. It seemed occasionally pretentious, but that didn't get in the way of it being a genuinely great movie. One small annoyance I perceived while watching it was that some lines, particularly the narrated ones, gave you the sense that while they were being written, the writer — in true writer fashion — thought them at least momentarily to be the most profound and original things ever uttered in the history of mankind. But being a particularly well written movie, I could overlook that. Little did I know when I threw Waking Life on, those lines would account for every character, every unprovoked speech, and every bit of dialogue in the fucking movie.
Maybe I lack the requisite Master's degree in Spare Time Pseudo-intellectual Dickery, but most of what any given character had to say was 10% idea and 90% bullshit and glitter. Even the ideas were nothing I haven't heard before. Nevertheless, everyone would passionately spout off their practiced soliloquies with the comfortably albeit misguided assurance that anyone around them gives a fuck. I'll be the first to say that there's probably some great, wonderful intended meaning in the mix of it all, but hell if the movie makes finding it even a remotely promising pursuit. By the time the fourth nutbag bleeds out every semblance of a thought he's ever had like he's got an undying desperation to make the most out of their Bachelor's in philosophy, the film is long past the point of evidencing any interest in engaging the viewer, apparently opting instead to beat the stupid out of him with its mighty pseudo-intellectual dick.
If I'd known what was ahead of me, I would've saved myself a few hours, injected some LSD, threw Richard Linklater's iPod on shuffle, smacked myself in the face with a modern art textbook, and staggered half-lucid into a Philosophy 101 class.
Two Thumbs Up
