...who don't know anything about psychology or philosophy. Given the general lack of plot and characterizations in this movie, its ideas are all it's got. And as it turns out, its ideas are catastrophically weak and largely banal. The majority of the ideas in this movie are borderline incoherent and poorly elaborated, steeped in the intellectual waste that is post-modernism and consisting of vague and sweeping rhetoric that only simulates the act of actually thinking about anything. The few ideas that do have merit are used to draw outlandish and untenable conclusions, with only one exception in the entire movie (your job is to figure out which one). Additionally many of these are very basic and simple and could be found just by reading secondary sources on philosophy, psychology, linguistics and evolution. On top of all this, Linklater fails to provide any structure or stance for these ideas, tossing them about all haphazardly, trying to impress the viewer with the sheer volume of ostentatiously dressed but poorly thought out, banal ideas. This makes the movie come across as extraordinarily self-indulgent and mind-numbingly pretentious...which, it is. The only redeeming feature of this film is the use of rotoscoping, which is a very versatile technique and used to decent effect in this movie. Unfortunately, because the movie itself is so bad, rotoscoping is sadly reduced to a gimmick to distract viewers from thinking about how much money they just wasted to see this movie.
Review of Waking Life
