Inherent Vice ** (2014, Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon) – Movie Review

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson adapts Thomas Pynchon’s novel with due conviction and gusto, turning it into a bizarre ‘groovy’ kidnapping romp peopled by unfathomably oddball characters. Oh well, it’s LA in the 70s, no need to fathom them or the impossibly difficult plot.

An appropriately wrecked-looking Joaquin Phoenix throws himself into the alienating role of drug-fuelled Los Angeles hippie-turned-private-detective Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello, who is hired by his ex-girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston) to locate her missing lover in 1970 and is surprised by her kidnapping plot involving her billionaire boyfriend, his wife and her boyfriend. Phoenix is normally one of the screen’s most likeable and sympathetic actors, an idea he buries totally here.

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the masters of the cinema, so it’s deeply troubling to find this movie so difficult to watch, let alone sympathise with. He brings his Boogie Nights retro energy and confidence to bear on the project, and it certainly looks and feels like one of those weird drug-fuelled psychedelic American movies of the 70s that catch the eye but don’t make any sense.

Somewhere, there’s a good hard-boiled detective thriller or a fun and funny satire trying to get out from under Anderson’s entangled movie. Certainly it runs like a thriller with its noirish voice-over narration and clearly it’s meant to be Anderson’s first comedic film since Punch Drunk Love (2002). Musician Joanna Newsom plays Sortilège, the film’s narrator.

Those who get Inherent Vice will tell you it’s one of the finest, cleverest films of the year that brilliantly captures the Pynchon absurdist stoner comedy spirit. Others will tell you it is a bum-numbing mess that’s hard to sit through for an agonising two and a half hours. Anderson has made enough great movies to be given the benefit of the doubt. Well, sort of, maybe.

This film is the first of Pynchon’s novels to be produced for the screen. Anderson’s script reportedly has Pynchon’s blessing so it has the approval of the master.

Rated R for drug use throughout, sexual content, graphic nudity, language and some violence.

Reese Witherspoon (who worked with Phoenix in Walk the Line) filmed all her few scenes in four days.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/