Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

As Good As It Gets

Absolutely brilliant

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The first 40 minutes of the films are in live action where Robin Wright plays a version of herself who's promising acting career didn't really flesh out after her success in the 80's and 90's while her while taking care of her family and the film industry is revolutionizing itself by using scans of actors to make films. Then for the next hour, it turns into an animated film which stays close to the novel The Futurological Congress, a completely surreal experience.The first stands as a commentary on how the film industry is exploiting artists and the fascist standpoint of the studios along with all the ethical and moral conundrums. But it's when the animated section starts that we understand that it's actually a much wider problem we are seeing here, it's not just the film industry but the whole world that is forgetting the true nature of being human and is embracing the virtual world of lies.Although it throws some of its concept on your face and may feel a little over ambitious to some it's an epic journey that is truly a unique experience. Ari Folman is definitely a genius helming films like this one and Waltz With Bashir

This film gets an average score of 6,5 out of 10, it seems like a score you'd give to your average, passable flick with average (=little) imagination. I'd give it a 7,5 at least. I didn't know what to expect at all and was in for a surprisingly odd visual treat that looks mostly like an animated dream.I'm not sure I want to re-watch this film again (I might get a headache), it was quite something to ingest. There's also a lot there to think about and not everything makes sense. Nor did it have to as the film chose to display a dream world mostly.The transitions between animated and live action are horrible, non-existent even. Also, the motivations (why does Robin escape to the dream world in a fancy car) are not always clear, neither is it always clear what's going on.Juggling with too many ideas, it's not consistently sticking to a core concept. I feel like I watched 2 movies. One like S1mone, but more serious. The other, more like an animated Being John Malkovich, less quirky but more poetic and equally self- referential (there's references to Robin Wright's actual acting career, she plays herself...).I could live with all it's flaws, because it was quite an intriguing film. I still give it a high score because it's concepts interested me and I think you have to see it also as a work of art to behold, not necessarily to comprehend. It's so different from the usual film, even if you watch (partially) animated films. The animation is the highlight of the film.I watched Planete Sauvage (trippy 1973 animation) a week ago and found this one equally stimulating for my brain as it feels expanded. Hadn't seen something like this since Paprika and this had more substance to boot even though it didn't focus and flesh it's ideas out enough. It was a bold attempt nonetheless.

This is an email review: Dear Milgro, just saw an incredible half animation film at the Budapest Israeli film week that I need to tell a film savvy person like yourself, about -- while it is still fresh in my mind. Name of Film "The Congress" -- or "The Futurological Congress" (2013), directed by an Israeli, Ari Folman, but having nothing else Israeli about it. In fact it stars actress Robin Wright and an elderly looking Harvey Keitel (now 75?) plus other Hollywood actors and is all set in Southern California ~ language English --with Hungarian subtitles -- (which I had to rely on half of the time because I left my hearing aid home!)Anyway, what is so unusual about this film is that about halfway through, after an inter-title saying "Twenty years later" it abruptly launches into highly stylized and imaginative Animation -- like Disney on LSD -- and stays that way for the whole second half of the film! -- which seems endless because it is so taxing on the imagination, but nevertheless starkly beautiful as far as the animation imagery is concerned -- grotesquely beautiful at times -- but so jaw-dropping and eye-popping that it truly reminded me of some of the LSD trips I took myself in the Bad Olde days of the psychedelic sixties --- Middle-aged Actress Robin Wright I had never seen before but was vaguely aware of the fact that she was once married to Sean Penn-- a personality I personally detest -- and Keitel, one of my fave actors, was only in it for a while at the beginning, as Robin's agent trying to cut a deal for her to make a comeback, with a sleazy producer at the "Miramount" film Studio, and gives a only a pale imitation of his former dynamic tough guy self, recognizable mainly because he still uses the the F word in every other sentence. Wright, playing herself directly as an over the hill star actress, 44, but still making strong professional demands, became increasingly interesting as the film went on -- playing incidentally on references to the Wright Brothers first heavier than air flight in 1908. Much of it takes place at some kind of informal airbase out in the desert where her terminally ill son flies kites endangering the landing of real planes and is obsessed by the Wright brothers first primitive aircraft --- but when it goes to animation and Wright is shown as a green eyed living cartoon avatar of herself it really goes to town and becomes something else altogether -- kind of jaw dropping without fully understanding what is going on -- (like an acid trip) -- all of which finally made sense when I noticed in the copious end credits that the whole thing was based on a story by Polish Sci-Fi genius Stanislaw Lem -- who also wrote another mind-bender, "Planet Solaris" (filmed in Russian by Tarkovsky in 1972) The title refers to the second half of the picture wherein actress Wright is driving serenely through the desert in an open late model car and suddenly comes to a gate in the middle of the road where a Guard in uniform bars her way but offers her the option of driving on if she is willing to attend the Futurological New Technology World Congress that is going on just beyond the gate. This she agrees to and presently enters a Parallel Universe of psychedelic hallucinations that takes over the entire second half of the movie. There she will re-encounter people she has lost track of including her son who died, and she herself will die but be reborn. Intimations of Immortality! This amazing picture was premiered at Cannes in 2013. Just wondering if you have ever heard anything about it. At Toronto or elsewhere. Anyway, good buddy -- This was one of the most unusual films I have ever seen, but I am rather a big fan of the kind of semi-realistic hallucinatory animation that was employed non-stop in Part 2 -- so, la-dee-dah. It would make one helluvan evening's entertainment as a double feature: "The Congress"with "Planeta Solaris" (the Tarkovsky edition). BTW: it was partly a Chien-Loup production -- a company that takes on projects others wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. Alex, Budapest December 7, 2016. Give it Eight stars and two tabs of white Ousley.

Huge talents (Robin Wright, Harvey Keitel, Paul Giamatti) totally let down by irredeemable execution. A promising premise, that actors will be replaced by their own avatars, is utterly wasted here. It's like the producers ran out of money, and instead of the live action/futuristic version, supplanted some weird, Fritz the Cat version of the second two thirds of the film, in it's place. "WTF was that all about?" you may, no WILL, ask yourself. Incoherent rubbish is the natural conclusion.This film must have been like the "Emperor's New Clothes" when being pitched. Somebody should have prevented Robin Wright making another terrible choice...