The Congress ambitious but deeply unsatisfying

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      Starring Robin Wright. Rated PG.

      A few tantalizing ideas are inflated into a full-bore disaster in The Congress, Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman’s ambitious but deeply unsatisfying follow-up to his autobiographical Waltz With Bashir.

      Again working with animator Yoni Goodman, the director loosely adapts the novel The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem, the Polish sci-fi writer responsible for Solaris. The opening is nicely shot live action, with Robin Wright as a tensed-up version of herself, an actress facing diminishing returns as she ages in an increasingly superficial Hollywood. Her agent (a slightly wooden Harvey Keitel) berates her for choosing family life over making hits. Currently, she’s coping with a bratty daughter (Sami Gayle) and a supersensitive son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) gradually losing his hearing and eyesight, according to a doctor played by Paul Giamatti.

      That dilemma isn’t really tied in with Wright’s central issue—that she never cashed in on her early success in The Princess Bride. “Give me another Buttercup,” barks the venal producer (extra oily Danny Huston) at Miramount (get it?), who has one last offer for her. The studio wants to scan her for both physical form and range of emotions. (Some personalities can be done quicker than others, obviously.) It’s a big payout; she has to forswear all acting and let her CGI double do the work.

      This concept is intriguing, but the movie takes about 40 minutes to get there, and the results don’t show you what her second-life avatar is up to in commercial formats of the future—a pretty nifty opportunity, creatively speaking—nor do they explore what it will mean to tell stories without real human presence. Instead, there’s endlessly dull palaver about how horrible the present system is, and how things can only get worse. Things do; once the scans are made and the animation kicks in, we’re treated to a garishly incoherent amalgamation of Fritz the Cat–era Ralph Bakshi, by-the-numbers manga, faux Betty Boop, and a whole lot of biker-van art—some of which will tickle your fancy, if only by kitschy accident.

      There’s some semblance of a story, with the white-haired cartoon Wright visiting the title conference, where she meets a protective character who resembles Clive Owen and talks like Jon Hamm. “It’s the work of a genius designer on a bad acid trip,” she says of the future, upon first inspection. Yes, but The Congress is actually more like a genius designer strapping you to a chair for more than two hours and telling you about his bad acid trip.

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