The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick (2001)

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I just watched this "documentary". I'm at a loss for words to express anything good about this piece... Which can only be described as a high school quality, steaming pile of sh!t. It pains me to say something so harsh about a documentary, because I usually love documentaries. I don't usually write reviews, but felt it necessary to warn others who might want to learn about Philip K. Dick. This low budget mistake is a dis-service and will turn watchers off to PKD through sheer boredom- which I can only assume is the exact opposite of what the producers had originally intended. Speaking of producers... Mark Steensland and Andy Massagli give credit to themselves no less than 6 TIMES EACH in the opening/closing credits for this festering ball of cat vomit . One of them lists himself as "Camera Director"... Which consists entirely of placing a camera on a tripod with seemingly no regard for lighting, then making sure that camera NEVER moves. Bravo. Unrated and uninteresting, this is an hour and 21 minutes I can't get back. Not only that, but what a horrible loogey to hock on such a great writer as PKD. Thanks a lot. In contrast, the episode of Prophets of Science Fiction dedicated to PKD is excellent! And the camera moves. And Ridley Scott doesn't credit himself 6 times... Although, he deserves it far more than these hacks. Thank you, drive-thru.

I want to make my review a riff on another review, written by Kurt Winter of New Jersey. He starts off by saying, "If I weren't already a PKD fan ... this docuflick would do absolutely nothing for me." And that is the very heart of the problem here. If I did not know who Phil Dick was, I would not have learned it from this film. When was he born? When did he die? Where did he grow up? These things are never stated.Winter writes, "While it was certainly informative, it could have been edited better, and could have been more broad." I completely agree, especially with the editing. Sometimes the different voices blend together to tell a story, sometimes they seem poorly connected. And the segue from one spot to the next is weak.More charismatic people to interview, or at least an eloquent narrator, would have helped a great deal. Just showing clips from people who knew Dick does not really tell the story. These people should be used to support the story, not be the backbone. The younger guys with websites seem completely out of place and even if their words are true, they come off as amateur.But, hey, if you are a Dick fan and want to hear his friends -- including Robert Anton Wilson and the author of "They Live" -- this is worth checking out.

I have read a great deal of Phillip Dick's work and was looking forward to seeing this. Hoo-boy, was THAT a mistake. The audio interviews of Mr. Dick were equalized/engineered so badly as to be unintelligible. The animated character that was shown during the audio interviews of Mr. Dick was at best laughable and at worst disrespectful. Mix the typewriter crap animation (mentioned in other reviews) with the cheesiest synthesizer soundtrack I have ever heard and you have a product that would drive Mother Teresa to walk into an orphanage with a fully loaded street-sweeper and open fire. This pathetic attempt at a documentary is almost criminal. Paraphrasing another reviewer here, it is a shame that one of the greatest writers of the last century gets this kind of treatment. Amen.

After watching this "film" i was moved to seek out the fiction ofPhillip K. Dick.So that's a good thing....Dick comes of as an interesting writerworthy of further study.The filmmakers, however, have assembled the material within insuch a fey, self-satisfied and fanboy-esque ineptitude that i foundmyself, after a time, staring out the window and listening, ratherthan watching the amateurishly-assembled and shot interviewfootage or (especially) the amazingly ill-conceived "animated"scene breaks. The people responsible for this have no idea offilm-making or pacing; had they no idea of how the silly, repetitive"animated" scene breaks would grind everything to a halt? Jesus.If you want to learn more about Dick, fine...you can get some ideafrom the material within. But, as film-making, this is an amateurishembarrassment.