Every once in a while you run into one of those true raconteurs at a party somewhere (always seems to be in the kitchen.) The kind who can keep a slew of cunts enthralled as he raps out too-perfect set pieces on any number of topics. You know it's part of his trick bag and he's spun the same anecdotes dozens of times before, tweaking them along the way.

Strewn amongst the tales, which are delivered like a polished stand-up routine, are memorable lines that make you look at things in a different way. Maybe a product of the speaker's own mind or plucked from some pop-culture guru of the day.

But it doesn't really matter where the ideas came from...the cunt's entertaining and besides, he's better than most fools who can barely string together a few coherent thoughts let alone reel off a clever narrative.

Waking Life (2001, by Richard Linklater) is a unique animated film that features a series of such individuals, as they keep the main character (and audience) rapt and intrigued via their most passionate interpretations of the world around them. In essence this film is a series of vignettes, sewn together by the main character's search for instruction and insight on life, and ultimately, a way to escape the dream in which he finds himself immersed. The gentle and inquisitive nature of the young man (played by Wiley Wiggins) who may or may not be experiencing the last few moments of his life in a surreal, time-skewed final exit, somehow matches, and guides, the feel and ambience of this memorable film.

On first glimpse it appears to be a live-action movie in which artists then drew over top of the original footage. In fact, albeit in layman's terms, that's exactly what it is. It creates an interesting and powerful medium, flashing between varying degrees of a detailed adherence to an authentic representation of visual reality and simpler line drawings that symbolize the different subject matter and states of consciousness that the protagonist is undergoing. The animated format provides unlimited potential for various tricks and added effects, which are always used in interesting ways and add to the overall feel of this evocative film.

The various rants and smooth, world-view recitations are at worst, new-age claptrap that couldn't withstand a cursory challenge of the concepts presented. The film is not unconscious of this fact. The wide range of viewpoints presented in the various monologues will undoubtedly provide at least some ideas or new way of looking at things that will appeal to many different individuals. While scoffing at a few, I couldn't help but be drawn into subsequent rants and soliloquies.

The film eventually moves towards a discussion on the nature of reality and the power of lucid dreaming.

The overall tone of the movie, though created by the seemingly independent voices represented by different characters or types in society, is not averse to mocking some of those very exhortations. Or more accurately, the same characters question themselves and provide a few different avenues for the viewer to examine their words and thoughts. A left or right ideological bent is not necessarily provided as the standard against which to judge various ideas presented. But more concisely: have they come to their views in an honest way? Does their highlighted bit of wisdom provide either a helpful or destructive road map for life?