Some great Science Fiction movies have come out or been inspired by the books of Phillip K Dick.
Blade Runner, Total Recall, The Minority Report and more recently The Adjustment Bureau. All of his works have a sense of paranoia or mistaken identity and delve into cool issues in a sci-fi setting. A Scanner Darkly just didn't excite me as much as the other films based on his work. I've seen a lot of praise for this not so widely seen film and figured I had to check it out after seeing a recent Science channel show called Prophets of Science Fiction which had an episode about Phillip K Dick. I've read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and several of the books with some of his short stories which I loved. This drug and paranoia movie although weird and considered one of the most faithful adaptations of his work didn't thrill me. The main reason is the Rotoscope animation used to present the film. I found it distracting and unnecessary. Why animate over actors like Robert Downey Jr and Keanu Reeves when the animation looks just like them. This style of animation is generally hated and I felt served no purpose in the film. Keanu is a bad actor whether you Rotoscope him or not and I don't feel it added to the film. Instead I believe my hatred of this style of animation took away from the movie and the performances of the actors. I would suggest all of the other films based on the works of Phillip K Dick before this one. If you want the non-Hollywood Phillip K Dick in pure form check out his books instead of this Rotoscoped version of it. The story itself is good, I just didn't like the method it was delivered in.
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