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Written by Roger Moore, MCT
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Thursday, 16 August 2007 |
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PAPRIKA
2 stars (out of 5)
Cast: The voices of Toru Emori, Megumi Hayashibara, Hideyuki Tanaka
Director: Satoshi Kon
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Industry rating: R for violent and sexual images
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The fantastical world we create in our dreams earns anime treatment in the Japanese fantasy-thriller "Paprika," a surreal head trip about technology designed to "open the door to our dreams."
With a conventional invade-dreams/bend-reality plot, it's a bit of a bore. It's not as dreamlike and mesmerizing as Richard Linklater's rotoscope-animation "Waking Life," less fanciful than the Oscar-winning anime "Spirited Away." But it's one of the more grown-up films of an animation genre known for its adolescent sci-fi, action and fantasy features.
There's this new gadget, the DC Mini, that allows people to record, study and revisit their dreams on their computers. Dr. Chiba is the young woman in charge of the project. Dr. Tokita is her obese nerd associate, the guy who worships her. Dr. Shima is their boss.
A prototype DC Mini is stolen. Dr. Shima has his dreams invaded and tries to kill himself. Dr. Chiba, working with a cop who has experienced the DC Mini's power, tries to find the missing gadget and stop this girl who is using it to "help" people. Her name is Paprika.
Paprika is labeled a "terrorist" as Chiba and Detective Konokawa track her and dream about her when they aren't tracking her. Reality morphs into dreams and vice versa as everyone in Chiba's orbit is sucked into Paprika's alternate reality. There's a conspiracy to foil and deep-seated secrets to be pulled from the memories of the various characters.
All mildly interesting as we ponder the course of our own dreams as we sit in on the movie's dream circuses, dream riots, dream chases and the like.
I've never warmed up to anime, and "Paprika" is a classic example of why. The stylized and admittedly gorgeous animation is jerky, underanimated and minimalist. It's dark, which fans of the genre really go for. Along with the violence and nudity.
But that combination of jerky stop-motion action, darkly tinted images and - in this case - Japanese dialogue with English subtitles is almost guaranteed to put a lot of us in a dream state. Or at least to sleep.
In between nude scenes, anyway. | Only registered users can write comments.
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