Movie Review: Paprika (2007)

I had never really gone into Satoshi Kon's work during the days of Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers. Even though there was an abundance of DVDs in Quiapo of his movie Millenium Actress, I never really got into it. Ireally dont know why, because Paprika is awesome.



I will skip the detailed synopsis for now, but Paprika is simply about the advancement of technology to the point where these scientists have come up with a device that can digitally interpret dreams and manifest them into your computer. The device gets stolen and is misused by one of its disenfranchised co-inventors and is now using this new untested technology to control the dreams of others. It is up to Paprika, a virtual dream manifestation of one of the projects developers to stop the mad scintist from driving everybody to a coma.



It is obvious that the real star of this movie is the trippy graphics and the dream like sequences that truly bring you to feel like you are in somebody else's dream. The jump cuts and the weird segues that can only be possible in REM state sleep give you the sense that time really does not exist. Also, the trademark weird cuteness that can only be japanese is present all throughout this peculiar exercise.

Overall Paprika is for anime fans who know how Japanese anime works and can appreciate or at least tolerate japanese eccentricity. The visuals are indeed a benchmark for traditional 2d animation and the story is reminiscent of the works of Phillip K. Dick (Total Recall, Minority Report). Over all, a great trip! Is your brain on anime?



Rocketboy's Rating: ****1/2(4.5 out of 5 stars)