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Reviews Counted:166
Fresh:112
Rotten:54
Average Rating:6.5/10
Consensus: A faithful adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel, A Scanner Darkly takes the viewer on a visual and mind-blowing journey into the author's conception of a drug-addled and politically unstable world.
Theatrical Release:18-08-2006
Synopsis: Richard Linklater's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's classic novel is a challenging, mind-bending experience that cautions about the dangers of excessive drug use as well as the government's capacity... [More]
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey, Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder
Director: Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater's squiggly new film, A Scanner Darkly, is an ambitious attempt to find the right visual style to render the experience of drug addiction and the paranoid vision of novelist Philip K. Dick, into a distinctive visual form.
Very ambitious and only mildly engaging.
This is a deeply personal work on the ravages of drug abuse, and the moral casualties suffered when governments fight it.
An ambitious animated adaptation of one of the most personal novels by sci-fi visionary Philip K. Dick.
Based on Philip K. Dick's 1977 novel that was informed by the author's own drug experiences, the film, which retains the dark humor often missing from other Dick adaptations is at once dated and eerily prescient.
This is a movie about losing one's grip and like any addict's story, it's boring, ugly, sad, and terribly human. And surprisingly funny.
What a breath of fresh air this stifling, claustrophobic, boldly uningratiating vision of an American subculture's last gasp imparts to its contrarian core audience.
Linklater wants A Scanner Darkly to be a thought-provoking, living graphic novel. But he floods the script with multiple meanings and loses himself in the hydra-headed metaphors.
[A] real-world movie that's essentially been spray-painted, Scanner has turned its back on one of animation's greatest strengths: the playful elasticity that allows characters to stretch and soar in impossible ways.
A well-realized dystopian sci-fi drama about addiction and paranoia.
...like Cubism in human form, woozy and kaleidoscopic.
Dick fans will find more to play with here than the average viewer. But as a rotund demonstration of visual imagination and social insight, the absence of focus just murders the effort.
The atmosphere of schizophrenia, paranoia and disconnection from reality is the most faithful screen adaptation of Dick's sensibility to date.
Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly does proud the tradition of cultish movies adapted from Philip K. Dick stories.
An ambitious drug movie that's much less mind-blowing than it could've been.
If the details of the plot wind up fuzzy and nearly irrelevant, Dick and Linklater's paranoiac vision remains in the memory.
Very much like the drug which inhabits it; splitting its own persona from paranoid druggie comedy to the sharp spiral of the addictive effects and the hopeless, misguided attempts to end it all.
beyond the aesthetics and the premise, A Scanner Darkly just stagnates
Richard Linklater brings a new novelty to a Dick adaptation: fidelity to the source.
It's the kind of movie that gets under your skin -- and stays there.
January 09, 2007:
Online Film Critics Name Their Year-End Favorites
Hosted right here at the illustrious Rotten Tomatoes is the official website of the Online Film Critics Society, an international group of flick analyzers who put their heads... More...
August 31, 2006:
A Taste of What's "Next" for Nicolas Cage
Any time I hear the phrase "movie based on a Philip K. Dick story," I know I have to do a little more research. The next PKD adaptation is Lee Tamahori's... More...
August 08, 2006:
Paul Giamatti to Star as Philip K. Dick
He night not be as famous as H.G. Wells or Isaac Asimov, but ask a sci-fi enthusiast what they think of Philip K. Dick, and get ready for a lengthy conversation. The late and... More...
July 24, 2006:
Box Office Wrapup: "Pirates" Passes $300M; "Lady" Stumbles
Johnny Depp made this weekend's four new releases walk the plank as his megablockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest became the first film of the year to spend... More...
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