Review of Paprika

For a film about dreams to be worth its salt, naturally the film should have some dreamlike qualities. But here, that's just about every facet of it: not just the scenes explicitly stated as dreams, or in its exposition of the blurred line between them and waking reality, but the art, writing, directing, all that. It's not dreamlike in that captivating, personal way, but rather it's that drawing connections between anything is basically futile. A majority of the scenes, especially as the film progressed, felt like they came straight from the unconscious. For this, some contend it's genius, or maybe terrible, but I'll just sayit's quaint. It feels inpenetrable yet shallow; dancing on the line between pretension and genuinely not caring. In the case of the latter, I'll say that in a post-structuralist manner, the whole schizophrenic gestalt that is this film is an interesting demonstration of surrealism; the entire thing being one big dream (considering the 4th wall breaks) but either I'm missing the mark completely or that's just wankery. There's still a plot that attempts to tell a concrete story, which was quite basic; behind the wonderful animation is nothing of note. You could say a lack of depth in story or characters was intentional, but if you excuse that for a second, the writing is just poor. Sure it's rife with symbolism for you to cogitate about, but if you're looking for actual insight, you will probably be disappointed.
All the praise is mostly in retrospect. Though it was occasionally sort of a rollercoaster, most of the progression was plain awkward. You may get a few minutes of breathing room, and it's like you're watching a completely different film, only for you to be thrown back in with no context. I guess Satoshi Kon's films are the kind of thing worth watching twice.