I think Richard Linklater might be the only person in the known universe who has read Philip K. Dick's novel "A Scanner Darkly" and found it funny. Why else would he take one of the darkest books about drug paranoia ever written and turn it into a movie comedy, an animated movie comedy no less?

You don't have to go any further than the first scene to know that Linklater is way off the map here. Read the first chapter of Dick's dense prose about a junkie who hallucinates that he is covered with aphids and then watch the first ten minutes of this film. Dick's novel is edgy, harrowing, creepy and weird. Linklater's opening credits sequence is like a teen comedy romp where a fidgety little weirdo (played by Rory Calhoun pushing maximum density) gets all jittery and goofy while electronic dance music plays. And since Linklater has decided to make the film a cartoon, the effect is kind of like having a retarded character from "King of the Hill" get high and fantasizing he is dancing with the cast of "A Bug's Life." It's embarrassing.

Linklater set the mold for this kind of impressive animation with his groundbreaking 2001 film "Waking Life." Maybe he's pissed that the crappy "Ice Age" beat him out when the first ever Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was handed out. Maybe he's decided to seek his revenge against Academy voters (God knows they deserve to be rebutted after voting "Crash" for Best Picture this year) by creating a crass, stupid film for the unintelligent masses.

"Waking Life" was one of the most thought-provoking, unique and cerebral films ever to be released. Hell, Linklater even appeared in the film as himself spouting off lines about Dick and his novel "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said" It's obvious that Linklater knows and loves Dick's work (it's hard to say anything similar to that and not make it sound intentionally dirty) and that's what makes his inability to "get" "A Scanner Darkly" so frustrating. If this were a film by Uwe Boll or Joel Schumacher or Eli Roth or something, someone trying to turn "Scanner" into a film along the lines of "Total Recall" (which is also based on a Dick novel), then it would be easy to dismiss and even mock the film. But this is Linklater! And while watching the film unspool, all one can do is sigh and slink deeper into the theater chair.

Linklater hires two of the most notorious celebrities involved in drugs in the past decade, Robert Downey, Jr. and Woody Harrelson, to be in the film and they act less like characters and more like frat boys out on parole. Linklater seems to allow them to liberally improvise and they must be high while filming because they do the most unbelievable job of pretended to be stoners lost in drug-induced paranoia possible. Seriously. Watching them here, pretending to be paranoiac and schizophrenic, is about as much fun as watching your friends be paranoiac and schizophrenic because they are high on drugs while you sitting there sober because you have to take a piss test in the morning. They seem phoney and irritating at the same time.

Equally uninteresting and unimportant is Keanu Reeves in the lead and Winona Ryder as something vaguely resembling a love interest. Reeves is the main character here and he plays his part as emotionless and boring as is humanly possible. His monologue/inner monologue soliloquies here are written in an acceptable manner but Reeves has the emotional scale of a dead trout and does absolutely nothing to help us give a Tinker's fuck about what is going on here. Ryder isn't even given anything interesting to say, so she can't be blamed for her blandness, but being the asshole that I am I will blame her anyway. (An interesting sidenote about Ryder appearing here. Wiley Wiggins, who made his debut in Linklater's "Dazed and Confused" and who is the main star of the previously animated "Waking Life," did his second films - the abysmal "Boys" - with Ryder. However, this is her first appearance in a Linklater film. Did Wiley hook them up? Wiley apparently has nothing to do with this film).

"A Scanner Darkly" goes nowhere and does nothing interesting. I don't know what Linklater was really trying to get at here but the film is not important or entertaining. It tries to have some political resonance by suggesting that the "government" might be responsible for the insurgence of drugs into America but this notion is nothing new and it is certainly treated almost as a footnote here.

It's a real shame when a film like "Waking Life," which is insightful, cerebral and intelligent, gets virtually ignored and a film like this seems to have the capacity to become a real cult hit. Stoners will love this film. Anyone off the pipe is going to be out of the theater before the first reel is over, however.

Notes:

Also with Alex Jones, an Austin cable access TV star who also has a radio show and appeared in "Waking Life." Jones is a conspiracy theorist who rallies against the government regardless of which party happens to be in power at the time. When Jones appears in either of these Linklater films, he is pretty much playing himself.

Score by Graham Reynolds who is probably the most prominent musician and composer working in the Austin scene currently. Peter Stopchinski, an Austin keyboardist who often works with Reynolds, is one of the score musicians. Apparently at one time Radiohead was attached to the project to provide music but that fell through. I'm not sure how much of Reynold's music was in the cut I saw. A Radiohead song from "Kid A" was used in the background on one scene.

Edited by longtime Linklater associate Sandra Adair.

Justin Hennard, who does Sound Design on many Austin films also did some work here.

Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney are two of the producers.

At one time Terry Gilliam wanted to make this film and at another point Charlie Kaufman had written a script.

The film was supposed to come out in 2005 and then the release date was changed to March 31, 2006. The film now has a release date over 3 months later than that at 7/7/06.

Viewed at a special sneak preview during SXSW in March of 2006 at the Paramount Theater. We were told that the film would be on HD, had temporary music and incomplete credits. You can read more about the screening on the Day 6 page of the Filethirteen coverage of the festival.

Report Card:

Script: F

Acting: F

Animation: B-

Originality: C

Music: n/a

Final Grade: F