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91An indie version of Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," albeit with none of the star power, a quarter of the budget, half the angst, and twice the charm.
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88Bernal continues to demonstrate an impressive range; the character requires the normally laid-back actor to be a wild ball of energy, and he's more than up to the challenge. His performance is hilarious, heartfelt and more than a little creepy, which could also be said about the movie itself.
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88It's not likely you'll see a film more visually exhilarating until, well, Gondry's next.
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83Very difficult to characterize and that's why I like it. The best I can do is to call it a sunny tragedy.
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83This fascinating and occasionally transporting film never quite transforms into something really great.
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83This scruffy, unkempt tale lacks the narrative satisfaction of Kaufman's dramatic design, but between the chaotic zigs and creative jags, it proclaims its own kind of messy authenticity and a bittersweet beauty.
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80The Science of Sleep truly has to be seen to be believed.
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80It suffers occasionally from self-consciousness and over-indulgence in its own oddity, but Gondry's grasp of emotion and visuals is enchanting. Even if he seems several sandwiches short of a picnic.
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80No one who sees it will confuse it with anything else. Fans of Gondry's DIY low-tech aesthetic, which he blends, as always, with exceptionally sophisticated animation techniques, will adore it.
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80For the soul of Gondry's work, it seems to me, is neither its soaring flights of visual fancy nor its sometimes crude slapstick, but rather its pained understanding of a generation hopelessly tongue-tied when it comes to matters of the heart.
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80Sweet, crazy, and tinged with sadness, Michel Gondry's new feature The Science of Sleep is a wondrous concoction.
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80It's rare for young actors to exude as much charisma and charm as Gainsbourg and García Bernal.
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80To me, the movie feels like a small but ingeniously crafted gift.
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80Never intends to be deeper than a magician's hat, and its wonderfully low-tech stop-motion technique is not only a nod to Czech animator Jan Svankmajer but a tacit rebuke to computer-graphics-heavy fantasies such as "The Chronicles of Narnia" or the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
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80Gondry is a soft surrealist without much of a sociopolitical agenda, closer to Dr. Seuss than Luis Buñuel,
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78I think it's a mess, but - and this is a major caveat - an endearing, beautiful, hopelessly honest mess that's supported by a pair of performances so unnaturally natural that they draw you in and clutch you, struggling, to their flipping, flopping hearts.
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75Fusing animation and live action with a series of outrageous props, Gondry veers dangerously close to being precious. But make no mistake: Gondry's hallucinatory brilliance holds you in thrall.
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75It only works about half the time, but it's an interesting half.
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75Unlike Gondry's previous features, Human Nature and Eternal Sunshine, Science lacks the sturdy armature of a Charlie Kaufman screenplay to support its eccentricities. The flood of delight in the film's first 90 minutes slowed to a trickle and, finally, a drip.
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75The title is all that's boring about director Michel Gondry's latest mind bender, as trippy as LSD.
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75The look of the film is dazzling, even hallucinatory, and the concept is beyond quirky as conceived by Gondry, a talented visual stylist, in his first film based on his own script. The story is compelling, unconventional and diverting in its blurring of reality and fantasy.
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75This pop-up book of a film is an ideal arrangement between director and star.
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70So while The Science of Sleep may not, in the end, be terribly deep, it is undoubtedly -- and deeply -- refreshing.
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70With Mexican star Gael Garcia Bernal energetically playing a vulnerable graphic artist with a hyperactive imagination and little confidence with women, picture has an overriding quality of sweetness that will prove endearing to audiences, especially younger females.
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67The Science of Sleep is like a weird dream that tugs at the memory throughout the day with its intriguing, misshapen pieces.
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63The result is a charming, inventive, ambitious, surreal mess.
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63Watching it is like being the only non-stoned person in the room as someone tells a long, long story.
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It's this edge that saves The Science of Sleep from its own whimsy.
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50Certainly pleasant, and occasionally endearing, but it's also strangely empty and unsatisfying, like hearing about someone else's wild dream: You can appreciate the details, but you don't really care how it turns out.
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50What "Eternal Sunshine" did with magic and whimsy, The Science of Sleep accomplishes with confusion and pretentiousness.
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50The Science of Sleep transports you, but it strands you, too. Apart from the time-machine bit and two or three other daft exchanges, Gondry's scenes tend to circle around the same drain: the hero's insufferable narcissism.
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50A frantic and funny diversion, but it pales and tires before its time is up. It doesn't know the meaning of enough.
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25You have to identify pretty strongly with suffering artistes to find anything to root for in The Science of Sleep.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 30 out of 41
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Mixed: 6 out of 41
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Negative: 5 out of 41
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MattC10
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6
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GinaR9