While it's a mundane cautionary cult tale about the perils of drug abuse, a curious visual appeal is what distinguishes this film.
Comment
07/10/06
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
67
%
Tomatometer
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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.
Runtime: 1 hr 40 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
US Box Office: $5,281,537
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
Reviews for A Scanner Darkly
101 - 120 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
While it's a mundane cautionary cult tale about the perils of drug abuse, a curious visual appeal is what distinguishes this film.
07/10/06
The stars [Reeves, Downey Jr., Harrelson, Ryder and Cochrane] are at one with Linklater and his vision of a future, screwed up world (like this one isn't screwed up!).
07/08/06
The film is quite entertaining in a bent sort of way, and if you like weird, you should definitely see this.
07/08/06
Simultaneously strange and familiar, not himself, Bob lives inside an ooky, unsolvable world that mirrors our own ongoing fears, of surveillance, loss, and forgetting.
07/08/06
[O]h, yes, the evil cleverness, the deep and seriously profound wit of casting... Keanu Reeves... with his melancholy insolence that everyone mistakes for lethargy, with his irony so deadpan it goes all the way back around to something like calculated sel
07/07/06
A Scanner Darkly is a visually riveting mind-bender inspired by drug-induced experiences.
07/07/06
Top CriticRichard Linklater wraps novelist Philip K. Dick's paranoid, prescient nightmare of addiction and identity lost down the rabbit hole in the same rotoscoped animation that helped produce the blissed-out groove of his Waking Life.
07/07/06
As fascinating and intelligent as the movie is, A Scanner Darkly leaves you wishing it might have actually been less faithful in word, and more in spirit, to Philip K. Dick's universe of bugged-out paranoid weirdness.
07/07/06
Like its protagonist, Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly suffers from a schizoid identity crisis.
07/07/06
For science fiction fans who prefer ideas over laser battles, this is the most meticulous and faithful movie adaptation of Dick's work -- and one of the most thoughtful.
07/07/06
It's a grand and elegant portrait of paranoia and malfeasance set amongst society's seedy underbelly.
07/07/06
Aesthetically interesting as it is, the film leaves you feeling somewhat blank and detached, sort of like the main character.
07/07/06
A Scanner Darkly doesn't quite live up to the promise of its opening sequence, but it's still an audacious offering during a season of brain-dead blockbusters.
07/07/06
Fans of the late sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick may rejoice at the news that Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly is the most faithful adaptation of one of his stories to reach the screen. Unfortunately, the story is one of Dick's least cinematic.
07/07/06
Hilarious digressions like these are bound to induce chuckles even among viewers who, as Bill Clinton would say, have never inhaled.
07/07/06
An impressive work of art, A Scanner Darkly, but you might need drugs to sit through it.
07/07/06
It’s a trip.
07/07/06
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.
07/07/06
Very ambitious and only mildly engaging.
07/07/06
Latest News for A Scanner Darkly
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:
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