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Paprika Movie Review

Paprika is a 2006 surrealist fantasy anime film directed by Satoshi Kon. It’s one of the director’s messiest and most incoherent movies.

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“Science is nothing but a piece of trash before a profound dream“

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When a machine that allows therapists to enter their patients’ dreams is stolen, all hell breaks loose. Only a young female therapist, Paprika, can stop it. Of all the four movies that Satoshi Kon made during his very short career, this one is by far my least favorite. This is because it’s one of those films that focus so much on being surreal, strange and artistic that it ended up being totally incomprehensible and weakly plotted.

It’s Kon’s film that resembled David Lynch’s filmmaking style most. Paprika focuses so much on dreams with the main theme being the blurring of the dream world and reality, but this immense focus on dreams led to the movie being not just dreamlike, but also structurally chaotic, very disorganized and ultimately pointless.

The characters also left a lot to be desired. The main character is thoroughly underdeveloped while the rest of them fared even worse. The voice acting is strong, I will give it that, but the characterization is quite poor. The dialogue is only serviceable and the plot is, as I’ve mentioned above, somehow convoluted and barebones at the same time.

Paprika is visually dazzling for sure. This movie is one of the best-looking of Kon’s career, there is no denying that. The character designs are uniquely versatile while the overall palette is colorful and backgrounds are vividly detailed and polished. The world building is fantastic here and there is a lot of imagery that is very memorable and either intriguing or creepy. The thriller elements are there, but I would call this movie a fantasy first and foremost.

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The movie did not appeal to me when all is said and done, but I do have to make a point that Christopher Nolan pretty much copied most of this film for his lazy and even more overrated ‘Inception’. It just goes to show how he can be a hack at times. With that being said, Paprika is short enough and its audio-visuals are strong enough that it wasn’t boring to watch at all, but I wished for more substance myself.