User Reviews

"Wake Up" is an American 10-minute live action short film from 2020, so still a really new movie. The language is English, but if you don't speak English, you can still understand this one as there is almost no spoken language in here. We hear the words in the title a couple times and there is one other occasion in which the protagonist says a senntence or two, but this situation you also understand well if you don't understand the words. Then again, i am not even sure why I am saying this because without knowsledge of the English language, you are not going to understand my review either. Anyway, the star here is the director, namely successful actress Olivia Wilde. I think she is definitely doing a fine job here overall. She may not yet be on Greta Gerwig level, but she is steadily improving into one of the better female directors, maybe even best if we restrict it to younger ages. Her work here was nominated at the Sundance Film Festival. The two directors here are Combs and Hilton, not Diddy and Paris, but a duo of writers who have never worked on another film before according to imdb. Maybe they should have gone with more experienced people who would come up with the screenplay. I must say this one here did feel a bit shoddy at times. When the woman leaves the hospital early on, I was pretty unimpressed. Outside, things get better and the feeling of being free was easy to grasp. How she looks at the little girl and the girl looks back was also nicely done. Said girl is not yet hypnotized by screen if you want to call it that. She still sees people, sees the protagonist. Sadly, afterwards the quality is dropping again. The moment with the singing guy in the train did not impress me at all, especially when the protagonist joins in. Also where did he go? He was not just a spirit, he should have walked past her when he finished singing, instead he vanishes. The scene with the drummers outside is slightly better, but also not good enough. The carousel scene is again clearly improved and truly joyful. Finally there is the dramatic highlight as she watches herself have this horrible accident when she is hit by the car. Because she was only looking at her (smart)phone. This inclusion I like again. It is a creative approach to making clear how it can destroy your life if you don't pay attention to traffic. But the film also delivers in terms of telling us how we miss really beautiful things if our eyes are just glued to the screen. This is what I mean with the words in the title of my review that I liked the idea and premise. Still I must say it feels a bit bizarre that this was done by HP and the words you can read on the screen do not make it any better for me. By the way, one final thing: The lead actress here is recent Emmy nominee Margaret Qualley. She was alright, certainly on the stunning side and also I don't really think this film/commercial could have been acted much better than the way she did it. She is still really young. I am positive we will hear more from here in the future. Hopefully a lot more that is better than this one here. As this is the Internet Movie Database, I will have to rate it as a film and as such, it is a negative recommendation for me. Rating it as a commercial, it would be a positive one though, certainly above-average there.