SnoopyStyle
Doctor Atsuko Chiba uses her alter-ego Paprika to treat police detective Toshimi Konakawa and his unsolved case in his recurring dream. Chiba, man-child genius Doctor Kōsaku Tokita and Doctor Toratarō Shima are running a secret program to enter into other people's dreams using the DC Mini. When the DC MIni is stolen in an inside job, people's dreams start to get invaded. The wheelchair bound chairman Doctor Seijirō Inui puts up roadblocks on the investigation.The wild dreamworld is amazing. It is imaginative and creepy. The story is another dreamworld mystery. It does need to work on the real world aspects. It needs to distinguish the real world from the dream world in the first half of the movie. When the worlds start to blend, the audience needs to feel it. The movie as it is never seems to leave the dreamworld. The dreams loses cohesiveness but it never loses its wonder. This is a superb visually wild movie.
welshnew50
A sublime collision of a variety of characters' necessitate-processing contextually to A virtual immersion , but limited in a almost nightmare like restriction of clashing pure imagination , crammed into a otherwise very short real-world plot ...humiliatingly contrasting role-matched characters, but of chr.s deliberately made simplistic for pride's sake , the unconscious' limits made easy to get a sense of , touch, almost , in a narrow and discard-able story , not needing either time nor expertise to fathom.Masterful , but watchable-without unrealistic understanding , connected to over-the- top (and boring) control-via technology plots , but imagination stimulating , rather than plot-familiarizing. Excellent..While more concrete , recognisability-dependent movie plot followers may well find this movie unfamiliar and obscure , or overpoweringly complex-reasons difficult to follow , many of its characters are of highly trained roles in a sci-fi scenario of complicated possibility of forces in a new or perhaps just yet-with any form of control , place of comprehension to the mind ... a tangled car crash wreck of imagination and inadequacy in a pure form as characters in a story of dream-connection , dream together in a series of collapses and envelopments of scope of only a small amount of , but observer-pervesingly satisfyingly constrictive or expansive inclusion of thought or neuronal connection-testing , as the characters struggle to both minimize damage in a already existing circumstance or precedent of the dream- technology going wrong , and simultaneously for recovery against a conglomeration of deathly thought , at times of cellular nightmarish depths and envelopment , at times only of perceived-power, immature and inexperienced (and realistic in those limitations) of inflated-overconfidence or self- dependence ... those perceiving power within the technology , monstrous and bound , those less caught up in its power more free , but daunted and only human in a variety of ways , that doesn't choke the plot with too much personal character-detail ...Balanced , although a little familiar-plot clichéd , it contrasts the actions of different people behind the veil that is lifted upon awakening from the perspective of any of the characters as they go into and out of the immersion , and demonstrates distance in shambled, jumbled, dreams magnificently , metaphors and transformative concealment of characters' limited interactions with the dream-scape so easy to miss , but also easy to associate with the deliberately different characters' roles ...Roles which in contrast to your own or absence of , easily make you think about detaching from yourself or your past , and what your own limitations would be , in this invasion of privacy in the extreme , yet still within a relatively safe real world environment , the contrast of yet-perfected technology in such desire , impossible to miss.Strengths of characters in its real world and this immersive one, are also contrasted by subconscious limitations , as each's struggles for shadows and terraformative continuation or stability-for-recognition , yet not in an intimidating dark sort of way ... distance and projection , and possibly even ESP is stimulated , without a person needing to either know exactly what is going on , nor why different levels of dream entrapment happen as the movie develops , forcing you to try to continue to try to identify where the ongoing problem in the technology lies , inamongst the characters , that you just can't know well enough to be able to ... forces you to try to use other indicators ... almost a last-minute cramming of psychoanalytic method of dream object identification for the average Jap. animation fan ... fantastic stimulation !!Don't think about it too much ... you can probably just watch , and try to spot things , almost like a game , unlike what one can take seriously of one's own or loved ones' minds ... a invasion of privacy , yet to come ?Great for an introduction to dream-scapes , even for the young ... sure to get them seeking out hidden parts of their minds they never knew they had ... perhaps not for those sensitive to horror ... better than many though ... more like egg-shell shock weirdness , than horror ... fantastic !Rodney Edwin Welsh
TheLittleSongbird
I do love anime thanks to the Studio Ghibli movies and Akira, Ninja Scroll and Ghost in the Shell. Paprika is up there with one of the anime greats. Of Satoshi Kon's movies, it was Paprika that impressed me the most though Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers are very impressive films too. Paprika is not going to please everybody at first hand though, it is quite a complex movie and perhaps more adult-oriented despite the "kid movie" stereotype that animation is often associated with. That doesn't bother me though, because as I've said before a few times already I consider Paprika a fantastic film. Of the animes I've seen, Paprika is one of the most visually beautiful of them. Surreal yet very imaginative, the vibrant yet atmospheric colours and detailed backgrounds are a real feast for the eyes. The score is a wonder to behold as well and fits perfectly within the movie, epic and truly memorable, it serves well also listening to it on its own. The script is quite complex in tone, but is incredibly thought-provoking and is written in a very literate and intelligent way. The story is always involving and clever, and it is easy to understand once you know the film's intentions. The themes interwoven into Paprika are very strong and interesting ones and never dealt in a heavy-handed way. The characters are engaging and easy to relate to, complete with a nicely diverse range of personalities. The voice acting is very dynamic. All in all, a terrific film, unique and a feast from the visual and musical front. 10/10 Bethany Cox
