Waking Life

Waking Life is a 2001 American experimental adult animated film written and directed by Richard Linklater for his first animated film. The entire film was digitally rotoscoped. It contains several parallels to Linklater's 1991 film Slacker. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprise their characters from the 1995 Before Sunrise in one scene. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2001 and was given a limited release in the United States on October 19, 2001.

Plot
Transcending the boundaries of technology and imagination, "Waking Life" is a revolutionary breakthrough in film animation. In "Waking Life," Wiley Wiggins ("Dazed and Confused") travels through a series of encounters and observations in a world that may or may not be reality. It is this surreal existence, flourishing with endless ideas and possibilities, that ultimately leads to the question -- Are we sleep-walking through our waking state or wake-walking through our dreams?

Why It Rocks

 * 1) It gives the unique idea on the animation art style; unlike other live-action movies that used the CGI characters, the movie used the 3D/2D animation-style technique theme effect for filmed on live-action, making the animation incredibly awesome and original for the use of colors. This is because the film was mostly produced using Rotoshop, a rotoscoping program that creates blends between key frame vector shapes, which also uses virtual "layers", designed specifically for the production by Bob Sabiston.
 * 2) The music score composed by Glover Gill is wonderfully discordant and dissonant, leading to the crescendo when the band is playing for some waltzers in a danse macabre.
 * 3) Funny dialogue, such as "Now I'm Free to see the WOOOOOOORLD!"
 * 4) Tons of heartwarming moments. For example, an old woman presents a drawing she made of The Dreamer in pencil - and the brief scene lends a mortality and weight, especially since the very next scene is a man mumbling as he walks past The Dreamer, "Kierkegaard's last words were 'Sweep me up!'
 * 5) *Another example is that one woman talks about her life in past tense, as if she were one of the recently dead. Made worse by the implication that she is the hero's dead mother.
 * 6) The film features the cameo that it made the movie worked.
 * 7) *Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy play their characters from Before Sunrise and Before Sunset in one scene, also written and directed by Linklater.
 * 8) *Alex Jones, the fringe political radio host, basically plays himself for one scene.
 * 9) *There are two creator cameos. Linklater is the other hitcher on the boatship at the beginning and the pinball player that speaks with the main character near the end.
 * 10) *The woman who talks about her life in the past tense played Wiggins' mother in Dazed and Confused.
 * 11) *Steven Prince appears as the man with the gun talking to the bartender, best known for his associate with Martin Scorsese, and whose storieswere "borrowed" by Quentin Tarantino for scenes in Pulp Fiction.
 * 12) Plenty of awesome moments, such as Tiana Hux's monologue as "Soap Opera Woman" strikes a chord with many and Speed Levitch's speech.
 * 13) The film explores a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of reality, dreams and lucid dreams, consciousness, the meaning of life, free will, and existentialism.
 * 14) Wiley Wiggins does an amazing and entertaining choice for plays the protagonist as the performance.

The Only Bad Quality

 * 1) Sometimes, the entire point of the rotoscoping can be uncanny.
 * 2) The bar scene is shocking and violent.

Reception
Waking Life received "universal acclaim" according to review aggregator Metacritic, which distilled 31 critics's reviews into a weighted average score of 82 out of 100. Based on 145 reviews compiled by Rotten Tomatoes, 81% of 145 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 7.4/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Waking Life's inventive animated aesthetic adds a distinctive visual component to a film that could easily have rested on its smart screenplay and talented ensemble cast.". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four, describing it as "a cold shower of bracing, clarifying ideas". Ebert later included the film on his list of "Great Movies".

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Trivia

 * This makes the first animated film to distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures (later known as Searchlight Pictures).