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Interesting to see this and the comment by @FtttG disliking A Scanner Darkly. I don't watch much any more so the odds of me rewatching it (or anything) are low, but I remember it had some incisive commentary about drugs and policing. Perhaps that was boring, though.
And by incisive commentary, I mean as someone who works in the criminal justice system, I found all-too-accurate the film's overall depiction of addicts (including them burning away everything about their personality until they're a hollow shell run by drugs), the drug scene, policing (including undercover work and how it all becomes intertwined with/dependent upon the drug scene), and the parasitic "treatment" industry that has attached itself to the legal system.
All of this was in the novel as well, it's just that the movie was... less than the sum of its parts. It had a great story (it's probably the most personal of Dick's works), a stellar cast, it cleverly used CGI, but it just didn't click together.
In contrast, No Country for Old Men (which I also read as a novel first and watched the adaptation later) is a great movie, despite being a similarly generally faithful adaptation.
Well put! I have a real soft spot for the movie, which is to say that I think it was quite well done while I also agree that it doesn't really hang together on the whole. In isolation, I love the actors involved and their performances, I love Linklater's vision, I think the animation brings an incredible level of surrealism to the movie, the script hews closely to the book in the best possible way... and yet. It's hard to connect to Bob/"Fred" as a protagonist. The drug fueled ranting and general chaos and insanity is a little too on the nose; it quickly becomes grating. And as good as the climax is, the resolution just feels superficial to me.
Maybe the script could have been better. Maybe the performances could have been tweaked just enough to make the difference. Probably the animation in particular hurt more than it helped, particularly with the emotional beats. Perhaps a different treatment would have done the trick. Regardless, I don't feel the need or desire to see it again.
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Have you read the book? I found that all the points in the film's favour that you mentioned came across more effectively in the book. I really cared about the characters in the book, and didn't care about the characters in the movie.
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