Paprika (2007) Movie Information:

Paprika (2007) Directed by: Satoshi Kon Paprika (2007) Written by: Seishi Minakami, Satoshi Kon Paprika (2007) Cast: Megumi Hayashibara, Tôru Furuya, Kôichi Yamadera, Katsunosuke Hori, Toru Emori, Akio Ôtsuka, Hideyuki Tanaka, Satomi Koorogi, Daisuke Sakaguchi, Mitsuo Iwata, Rikako Aikawa, Shinichirô Ôta, Satoshi Kon, Yasutaka Tsutsui

Paprika (2007) U.S. Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics Paprika (2007) U.K. Distributor: Sony Pictures

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Paprika (2007) Synopsis:

Satoshi Kon's new animé plays like a head-on collision between Hello Kitty and Philip K. Dick. The plot starts with a machine that lets therapists enter patients' dreams: When it's stolen, all hell breaks loose, and only a woman therapist (nicknamed "Paprika") seems able to stop it. Kon is a brilliant director by any standard and as the characters shuttle from dream to dream, nightmare to nightmare, Paprika becomes a thrilling tour-de-force of visual invention-every frame is packed with imagination. This delightful movie is bursting with ideas about Japanese repression, multiple identities, collective dreams and the dark side of his countrymen's love of Cute.

Paprika (2007) Movie Review:

Hard to imagine, but I hoped “Paprika” would be weirder and creepier than it actually was. Given its boundary-less territory of dreams run amok to explore, I expected much less coherence and much more eerie sensation. Still, it's satisfying enough that the animated movie delivers what it promises -- the dream-involved sequences are indeed surreal, as director Satoshi Kon exercises his visual mastery of that uniquely dreamscape phenomenon of sudden displacement and dislocation.

The story involves misuse of a stolen technology that allows therapists to enter a patient's dreams; in the wrong hands, it's apparently powerful enough to induce anyone to a dream state and potentially trap them within (or, as the case may be, to allow the dream to spill without). Enter one of the inventing team's scientists, Atsuko Chiba (voiced by Megumi Hayashibara), who enters dreams as her alter ego, the spry and sprightly Paprika, to play detective and find the criminal perpetrator; also involved is a real police detective with troubles of his own. Thematically, it tackles dreams, cinema, and the internet as conduits for repressed desires. The movie's a fantasia, to be sure, but its uniqueness may be relative to the amount of familiarity you have with anime in general. Weirdness is a given here, as is a lot of sci-fi/philosophical dialogue and exposition.

Not as sure a bet is the communication of humanity in the characters -- to its credit, “Paprika” devotes much time to getting to know its protagonists, but I found their issues a little too easily reduced to familiar pop psychology. For this movie, it's better to sit back and enjoy the detail-rich visuals while appreciating the unfettered imagination at work in constructing them, as well as the apparent wild enthusiasm with which they were tackled.

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Paprika (2007) review written by: Jeffrey Chen