To describe A Scanner Darkly as a futuristic film about drug use that mixes live action and animation will immediately give the wrong idea to anyone who cut their teeth on “head” films of the early 1970s. This is not a cinematic trip, a la 2001 or Fantasia or whatever other movies you used to see while under the influence. Adapting Philip K. Dick’s early 1970s novel about an Orange County undercover cop (Keanu Reeves) who is also one of the drug addicts he is assigned to infiltrate, director Richard Linklater uses the same rotoscoping process he employed in Waking Life, in which conventionally photographed images are treated to become animation. But where Waking Life varied the degree of animation in step with its shifting menu of ideas and discussions, it’s more or less omnipresent here, and much more static. Watching it gives the effect of a brief initial high followed by a bad buzz, which is not inappropriate to Dick’s story of loss of identity, surveillance and paranoia in an America that more resembles the one we live in than the one in which he wrote. Dick fans will be pleased that Linklater’s adaptation is far truer to its source than any previous film based on the late writer’s work. Others may enjoy the stoned repartee between Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson as Reeves’ roommates but otherwise find this heavy going.

If I had to guess, I’d say that You, Me and Dupree was written as a vehicle for Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, but Stiller turned it down on the grounds that it’s the same movie he’s already made a hundred times. At which point the studio substituted the first available actor with dark enough hair to provide a visual contrast with Wilson and proceeded.

International cinema is generally an accessible medium despite national and cultural barriers. It’s able to transcend these obstacles—including language—by virtue of commonly understood human stories and predicaments, and, of course, the use of subtitles and dubbing.

People in my line of work like to give the impression that we’ve seen every movie ever made, but somehow I never got around to seeing the original Pirates of the Caribbean before I had to watch this sequel. I thus attributed my utter confusion through the film’s 2 1/2 hour length to ignorance. Having since watched the original, I can see that it wouldn’t have made all that much difference: while Dead Man’s Chest presumes familiarity with its blockbuster predecessor, it’s such a grab bag of comic set pieces, special effects and star turns that you’d probably have to see it several times to make much sense out of it. Like the Star Wars and Matrix sequels, it expands on a premise that was more or less complete to begin with, and the element it most sorely lacks is the freshness of the original. Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow is lost here among the breakneck pacing, and if he’s been marginalized you can imagine what happens to bland romantic leads Orlanda Bloom and Keira Knightley. The only cast member to emerge with his dignity intact (the others presumably content with fat paychecks) is Stellan Skarsgard as Bloom’s undead father. Dead Man’s Chest is not lacking in entertainment value: there are a few stunt sequences inspired by Buster Keaton, and enough gruesomely conceived monsters (the best of them hiding an unrecognizable Bill Nighy) to give young kids nightmares for a week. Still, one comes away from it feeling less exhilarated than exhausted. (If your bladder can hold out, there’s a funny moment after the ten minutes of end credits.)