Woah, like, the animation dude, like, woah it all looks incredible with its constant spectacle and visual creativity that goes absolutely all out almost constantly, I'm sure that the plot's going to come in and tie things together really nicel- oh, it's over? This basically felt like my reaction to Paprika, broadly speaking anyway. There's no real doubt to me that this film is truly remarkable in certain respects, with a lot of time and care being put into making the world of dreams feel incredibly evocative and capitalising on the lunacy that could go on in one's own subconscious thoughts. I love the way that so many of the scenes that take place in this area jump around so frenetically, yet seamlessly, often having the scenery completely morph into something entirely different in practically every way beyond the eye catching colours and general sense of chaos. This is made all the stronger once the divide between dreams and reality is obscured, with this constant weirdness on screen fully selling the idea that things are just, totally going to hell by the end of this. Some attempts were also clearly made at making a lot of this incredible imagery feel symbolic as well, giving some meaning to what could easily have been seen as just animation flexing for the sake of it. This ultimately serves to deepen the characters without having to provide additional exposition to convey it, not to mention making a lot of this feel very significant.
Unfortunately, despite this, it still doesn't stop the plot and its development throughout from being really all over the place to the point where it feels like a missed opportunity. It really feels like too much was crammed into this, with what feels like an attempt to throw the viewer for a loop every 10-15 minutes, which ends up becoming both confusing and tedious by the end. This is especially the case with a lot of the tension being killed due to the plot's reliance on characters that have gotten next to no screen time, making it really hard to care in a lot of cases like, it's hard to care about some of these plot developments when they completely revolve around characters that I've seen for a grand total of 5 minutes in the last hour. The convoluted storytelling also hurts the final sequences that strip basically all of this away in favour of a very standard sort of good vs evil encounter that ends far too suddenly, making me think that this would have benefitted from another 10 - 20 minutes of runtime to develop some of the more loosely strung together elements and make it a more satisfying experience overall. At the end of the day, I undoubtedly loved some parts of Paprika, particularly the visuals and presentation in general, but it wasn't quite enough to distract me from some of the more dramatic flaws this had, particularly towards the final act. A good watch that had me engaged throughout, but I can't really say I loved this either.
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