Thoughts on Paprika

Just a heads up, this post will probably have spoilers, so if you plan on reading the book or watching the movie then go ahead and check those out first. I’m just sharing my thoughts after finishing both.

So I watched the movie Paprika and instantly fell in love with it in the opening ten minutes. The way it portrays that first dream was stunning. Doing a little background research I found out the movie was based on a book. I snapped that up pretty quickly, but I’m not so sure I was as big of a fan of it.

For the unfamiliar, the book/movie concern a dream detective named Paprika. A psychologist who works at the lead medical/mental institute in Japan where they have developed technology to jump into other peoples dreams at night, and be able to use that as a form of therapy. Things get difficult when an experimental device is stolen by an employee at the hospital who begins to invaded other peoples dreams, and causing them to go insane.

I think the moment when the book started to jump off the rails for me was when Atsuko went into a dream, and pulled another person’s DC Mini back into the real world somehow. I think there were a lot of other things that stuck out to me, but that was the turning point.

The issue I have is the breakdown of the dreams between multiple people and the real world. Granted the movie jumps off the rails as well, but the difference is, is that when the movie decided to ramp up the insanity, it was towards the end, and it all happened at once, which had WAY more of an impact.

When the book started to introduce it, it was such a slow burn, and even after reaching the end, it never felt like it went too crazy. Like I said, it started out with grabbing the DC Mini’s, then it moved onto a giant doll smashing a glass ceiling, then there was a tiger loose in a hotel. Then a character became a samurai. Then a character became a demon and attacked someone. Then giant birds were attacking the city. It just became pretty dragged out. It’s just a bunch of small events one after another, and then a lot of downtime between scene’s. By the end of the book somehow the main characters were able to travel through time. Not in the dreams, but in the real world. No idea how, or why, because they only use it once, and that’s to get back to the Nobel prize acceptance ceremony before it was attacked.

Oh did I mention that part? Towards the end of the book, two of the main characters are invited to Sweden to do a talk at the Nobel prize about the DC Mini. It’s like ‘well, there’s this guy who’s infecting the real world with his dreams that we need to catch. But fuck that, how many times do we get to fly to Sweden?’

I really loved the way Atsuko was portrayed in the movie verses the book. In the movie, Atsuko had way more of a demanding presence and just got shit done. In the book, it seemed to spend more time saying ‘she had a demanding presence’ then mostly spent time with her bitching about how weak she is, and needing someone to help her.

Hell, by the end of the book, all of the other characters are bailing her out of trouble rather than her being an expert psychologist using her wits to gain the upper hand. It’s fairly unsatisfying to be honest.

In the end, I feel like the movie did a much better job than the book for once. Usually I like reading for the more indepth look at the characters and scene’s, but I didn’t feel like I got what I was expecting. The movie was fairly well put together, it never felt like it dragged. I really liked the characters, and it was as long as it needed to be to get it’s message across.