The horrible review in the newspaper.
The newspaper here printed this review:
"'The Science of Sleep' is a snoozer
Story is meaningful only for director
By David Germain
Associated Press
Rating: 2 out of 4 stars.
Michel Gondry makes more interesting films when he's chasing through screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's playful thoughts than his own.
"The Science of Sleep," writer-director Gondry's tale of a man-child (Gael Garcia Bernal) seesawing between his harmless fantasy world and a stifling outer life, is filled with clever, dreamy visuals.
But the emotionally stunted hero feels as artificial as the makeshift props Gondry weaves into the man's weird alternate reality. The props and characters have no purpose except as playthings in Gondry's cinematic sandbox, which he uses to create a semiautobiographical world that has deep meaning for himself but is little more than a jumble of loosely connected images to anyone else.
Fun images, yes. Meaningful, no.
Bernal stars as Stephane, a man whose vivid dreams of a cloistered personal world gradually take precedence over his drab real life.
While sleeping, he's master of "Stephane TV," a TV studio built from cardboard boxes, shower curtains and other found objects.
In actual life, Stephane has just returned to Paris, where his mother has landed him what's supposed to be a job designing calendars. It turns out to be little more than a typesetting gig, though, and Stephane retreats further into his dreamscapes.
Stephane finds a potential anchor to draw him back to the conscious world when he meets his neighbor, Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and her friend Zoe (Emma de Caunes).
A sweetly chaste kinship develops between Stephane and Stephanie, their similar names part of Gondry's warm and fuzzy stab at examining themes of duality and synchronicity.
Gondry crafts some deceptively simple and wonderfully inventive sets, effects and animated sequences.
But the individual moments feel disconnected, the movie playing out like a compilation of Gondry's innovative music videos. "The Science of Sleep" entertains in a fleeting way, and no doubt, it's all deeply personal for Gondry. For the rest of us, it's like sleepwalking through someone else's tepid dream."
I'm tired of critics giving inventive films worse reviews that those stupid computer-animated animal movies(they gave that new one three stars) that all have the same plot and the same effects and are pretty much the same movies, only some are set in the forest and some on a farm, etc. The review says that The Science of Sleep was only meaningful to the director, and to the audience was only a strange, confusing journey through the main character's(Stephane) weird fantasy dreams. Gondry wove the story perfectly through Stephane's dreams and real life, and also let the viewer figure out themselves that Stephane could sleepwalk, instead of just outright showing you. The dreams were not just meaningless artistic scenes for Gondry to create; they were introspection into what Stephane was feeling, whether those feelings be unconscious to him or not. "Stephane TV" was the way Stephane's thought process worked; it personified how he analyzed the environment around him--I thought Gondry made that completely clear. It was a beautiful, well thought out, creative film. All of the special effects were completely hand made and the movement was completely created by Gondry; there was little to no computer work at all(I believe). Hollywood no longer--if it ever did--values creativity (or complexity) in film. It just wants to see consistency; it wants to view the same movie with the same regurgitated plots over and over and over again. The number one movie in the dumbest country is Jackass--essentially just the same people being dumbasses in India instead of America. America is so dumb that it can't comprehend anything above the plot of Fifty First Dates.
"'The Science of Sleep' is a snoozer
Story is meaningful only for director
By David Germain
Associated Press
Rating: 2 out of 4 stars.
Michel Gondry makes more interesting films when he's chasing through screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's playful thoughts than his own.
"The Science of Sleep," writer-director Gondry's tale of a man-child (Gael Garcia Bernal) seesawing between his harmless fantasy world and a stifling outer life, is filled with clever, dreamy visuals.
But the emotionally stunted hero feels as artificial as the makeshift props Gondry weaves into the man's weird alternate reality. The props and characters have no purpose except as playthings in Gondry's cinematic sandbox, which he uses to create a semiautobiographical world that has deep meaning for himself but is little more than a jumble of loosely connected images to anyone else.
Fun images, yes. Meaningful, no.
Bernal stars as Stephane, a man whose vivid dreams of a cloistered personal world gradually take precedence over his drab real life.
While sleeping, he's master of "Stephane TV," a TV studio built from cardboard boxes, shower curtains and other found objects.
In actual life, Stephane has just returned to Paris, where his mother has landed him what's supposed to be a job designing calendars. It turns out to be little more than a typesetting gig, though, and Stephane retreats further into his dreamscapes.
Stephane finds a potential anchor to draw him back to the conscious world when he meets his neighbor, Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and her friend Zoe (Emma de Caunes).
A sweetly chaste kinship develops between Stephane and Stephanie, their similar names part of Gondry's warm and fuzzy stab at examining themes of duality and synchronicity.
Gondry crafts some deceptively simple and wonderfully inventive sets, effects and animated sequences.
But the individual moments feel disconnected, the movie playing out like a compilation of Gondry's innovative music videos. "The Science of Sleep" entertains in a fleeting way, and no doubt, it's all deeply personal for Gondry. For the rest of us, it's like sleepwalking through someone else's tepid dream."
I'm tired of critics giving inventive films worse reviews that those stupid computer-animated animal movies(they gave that new one three stars) that all have the same plot and the same effects and are pretty much the same movies, only some are set in the forest and some on a farm, etc. The review says that The Science of Sleep was only meaningful to the director, and to the audience was only a strange, confusing journey through the main character's(Stephane) weird fantasy dreams. Gondry wove the story perfectly through Stephane's dreams and real life, and also let the viewer figure out themselves that Stephane could sleepwalk, instead of just outright showing you. The dreams were not just meaningless artistic scenes for Gondry to create; they were introspection into what Stephane was feeling, whether those feelings be unconscious to him or not. "Stephane TV" was the way Stephane's thought process worked; it personified how he analyzed the environment around him--I thought Gondry made that completely clear. It was a beautiful, well thought out, creative film. All of the special effects were completely hand made and the movement was completely created by Gondry; there was little to no computer work at all(I believe). Hollywood no longer--if it ever did--values creativity (or complexity) in film. It just wants to see consistency; it wants to view the same movie with the same regurgitated plots over and over and over again. The number one movie in the dumbest country is Jackass--essentially just the same people being dumbasses in India instead of America. America is so dumb that it can't comprehend anything above the plot of Fifty First Dates.