Not a satisfying flick, plain bland and boring to say the least

You bought the DVD expecting it to suck. Already hating the genre of "Anime", and disliking any and all movies similar to this. What were you expecting, I mean my god, of course your going to hate it. This movie isn't for everyone, but if you knew you were going to hate it why the bleep did you buy it, or even watch it.

And as far as surrealist should never explain itself, Surrealist art does whatever the bleep it wants to, if a director can find a wall to break he is going to tear it down. There is no denying this is a surrealist film, in the vein of twin peaks, which means it has a plot and the surrealism makes sense and can be explained. I mean you can't set the guidline "okay analupean dog is the epitomy of surrealism, therefore all films of a surrealist nature must be like this". That defies the very point of surrealism.

And just because it has multiple plot lines and the characters have multiple goals does not mean the story has zero focous. I mean god man, why did you even watch it.

I met Death today. We are playing chess.

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You're a simpleton. Life will disappoint you continually because you won't be able to understand it's beauty and horror.

maybe if you would have seen satoshi's earlier movies you'd understand him and the fact that you disliked other anime films proofs to be you just don't take any anime seriously. so my question is have you seen any other asian movies of any kind even bollywood? becasue the asian mindset and art is way different that anyting in the west. and really frolm what you say about this film i'd say you really misunderstood it completely. like when you say it was trying to be like miyazaki, what of miyazaki was this trying to be like they are very different directors with sompletely different visions. I'm also really confused what you saw in whisper of the heart that you didn't see in this or the other films? Because you are really just saying to me if it is asian then you don't like it. whisper fo the heart is the most western thing gibli has ever made.

You're not a fan of anime but you talk about "anime these days" as if you're intimately familiar with the subject.

Different strokes and all that, but your criticism is simply so absurd and way off the mark that it can't be taken seriously. It's painfully obvious that you don't understand cinema at all, and thus you should not be talking about it. Leave this stuff to people who have a clue.

OK, a few things about Paprika that have not been brought up so far.

First of all, it was based on a novel. Rather than being "just the director doing some completely random things which look and sound deep", the writer/director (yes Virginia someone writes the movie before the director starts directing) was trying to recreate in animation something which had been conceived for the printed page.

Second of all, I'm not sure you understand what surrealism is. Surrealism is an artistic movement that was created in the early 20th century which was largely focused on realising Freudian psychoanalysis in artistic form. It was also intended as a revolutionary act, in the political sense; it partly grew out of Dadaism, which was based on the idea that the only sane response to WWI was insanity (or more precisely irrationality). Paprika is quite bizarre in some senses, but it is not surrealism.

Third, I know you've said that you like to judge a movie on its own merits and not by its creator, but as a movie Paprika is very much a development of the obsessions of writer/director Satoshi Kon, who saw something in the original novel that sparked off his own ideas. If you watch his earlier work (not so much Tokyo Godfathers, but very much Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress as well as parts of his series Paranoia Agent) you will notice that Paprika is in many ways a refinement of concepts and ideas he has been working out for years. Sometimes it can be more rewarding to view an artwork (or entertainment if you insist) as part of the creator's larger oeuvre.

Anyway, at the end of the day I really do think that you didn't "get" Paprika. I went into it with some idea of the writer/director's previous work, and the movie made perfect sense to me. In no way did it seem like "just some random scenes loosely stringed together" - it all seemed to be clearly working and moving in the same direction.

I would be very interested to hear what sorts of movies you do consider to have depth. Partly just because I like movie recommendations. :-)

i have to say, the fact that you admit to not fully understanding this movie and movies like spirited away, shows that you're really unqualified to even post an opinion on it. it's also based off of a book, so really, this is one directors interpretation of what he's read [which was whole-heartedly praised by the author himself]. if "anime" or japanese animation in general was not your cup of tea to begin with, then why bother continuing to seek it out? everyone is right, your opinions are baseless. you cannot possibly form a proper opinion on anything without fully understanding it. if you're too dense to understand a complex plot and too "refined" to appreciate an excess of visual effects, then stop pretentiously writing reviews on sh.t you know nothing about. writing well doesn't make you smart. all of your opinions are so generic, i can barely tell if you were actually watching the movie.

I watched 30 minutes and knew i would regret if i watched the rest.