Scanner Darkly, A

Premiere Glenn Kenny

The most impressive thing about the film's technical wizardry is, finally, how unimpressive it is. One doesn't leave the movie with a mind blown by visual bedazzlement but with a soul shattered by the profound sense of tragedy Linklater and company so beautifully put across.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

The casting of Reeves in the lead role is inspired: who better than the star of "The Matrix" and its sequels, a trilogy that borrows heavily from Dick's sensibility and obsessions, to play a personality split through overindulgence in drugs and manipulation by outside forces he barely recognizes?

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Probably the most faithful to the writer's tortured spirit. It's the kind of movie that gets under your skin - and stays there.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

The brilliance of A Scanner Darkly is how it suggests, without bombast or fanfare, the ways in which the real world has come to resemble the dark world of comic books.

Dallas Observer Rob Nelson

What a breath of fresh air this stifling, claustrophobic, boldly uningratiating vision of an American subculture's last gasp imparts to its contrarian core audience. (Call me a hopeless addict: I've seen it three times.)

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Without its animation, A Scanner Darkly would have made a fine cautionary tale about drug addiction, paranoia and institutional treachery in a police state. But with a technique that turns the existing live action into a two-dimensional cartoon, the movie goes one -- maybe even 10 -- better. It becomes its own living, breathing metaphor.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

It's one of the most faithful movie adaptations of any Dick story to date, and it comes from the scariest of all his books, as well as the truest.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

There's no other filmmaker, living or dead, who could produce a futuristic sci-fi nightmare, a hipster comedy, a haunting film noir and a cartoon, all in the same movie.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Downey, who, having grasped that he's playing a cartoon character, delivers the most animated performance. (Midway through 2006, this supporting turn is the performance to beat in what seems the year's American movie to beat.)

LA Weekly Christopher Orr

As they (Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson) bicker and banter, threaten one another with small household objects, and try (unsuccessfully) to determine the number of gears on a bicycle, they display a combination of irritability and incompetence that is the soul of comedy.

Empire Kim Newman

Its intelligence makes it near-essential viewing.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Turns out to be more ordinary than the recipe might suggest. Oh, it's dense and funny and assured, but it's also chatty and listless in a fashion that constrains a narrative film, which, however reluctantly, it is.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

With everything this film has going for it - humor, intelligence and a splendid ensemble - Richard Linklater's nightmare drug movie, A Scanner Darkly, should be continually compelling. But it loses its fizz after a strong series of pops.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

There's conspiracy here, as there is in all of Dick's books, and it wraps the film up with a moving but somewhat neat bowtie.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

But transforming full, live-action performances into quavering cartoons isn't inherently lyrical, and here it produces the jittery sense of a world dissolving into flat forms and buzzing prattle.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Doesn't quite live up to the promise of its opening sequence, but it's still an audacious offering during a season of brain-dead blockbusters.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub

The visual style and lethargic pace can be frustrating -- at least if you're sober -- but the animated tragedy is still a success.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

This gifted writer-director isn't out to dull the masses with cinematic opium. Embedded in the visionary headtrip of A Scanner Darkly is a hotly political call to arms.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

The film is weirdly fascinating in its own maverick way.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Rotoscoping makes certain sense for a film about cognitive dissonance and alternative realities, though both the vocal and gestural performances by Mr. Reeves, Mr. Harrelson and, in particular, the wonderful Mr. Downey make me wish that we were watching them in live action.

Variety Justin Chang

Deeply intriguing but almost too-faithful adaptation of Philip K. Dick's nightmarish 1977 novel.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Which makes it all the more frustrating that the film doesn't quite work, and that it drags from episode to episode--some are brilliant, most merely intriguing--with little momentum.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

As a whole, the film has too little character and/or plot development to sustain narrative interest. What A Scanner Darkly excels at is mood and tone.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Definitely not for everyone. It's a very bleak story with uneven pacing and a narrative whose jumps in time are confusing and occasionally infuriating. But the post-apocalyptic mood blends well with its uniquely stylized look and surreal story.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

If ever there was a movie more destined to become a cult phenomenon, I don't know if I can name it.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Smartly cast, in the sense that Reeves, gloomy and pained, and Harrelson, confused and explosive, both seem befuddled while Downey, as the devious, intellectual Barris, is befuddling.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Scanner is mostly all talk, and the talk is entertaining only when it's coming from Downey. The actor's long history of drug abuse taught him a thing or two about cooked behavior, and he gives some anxious run-on monologues that are very funny.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It's watchable, due to the rotoscoping technique...It's also as lightweight as the smoke rings blown by one of many perverse, dull characters.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

More than once during A Scanner Darkly, you find yourself wishing these characters would just shut up.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Isn't as dark or sinister as its source material, but it comes closer than any other filmed attempts to this point. It may only be a decent movie, but it's a pretty fine PKD adaptation.

Philadelphia Inquirer David Hiltbrand

A rambling depiction of a junkie's descent into zombitude.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

In A Scanner Darkly, we're watching other people freak out, but the film is maddening to sit through because their freak-outs never become ours.

The Hollywood Reporter Duane Byrge

Audiences will have to seek out their own peculiar diversions in order to last the whole course of this demi-dud.