Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Katherine Waterston, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio del Toro
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Adapted Screenplay, Costume)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars
(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Doc (Phoenix), a frequently strung-out private investigator convinced by his ex-girlfriend Shasta (Waterston) to undertake a case to prevent her billionaire boyfriend Mickey (Eric Roberts), from being committed by his wife and her lover. Meanwhile, Doc is hired by other clients to investigate a similar situation related to Mickey (why get paid once when you can get paid multiple times?), and soon he finds himself immersed in the occasionally kooky world of the 1970's Los Angeles drug trade.
The film is not for the faint-of-heart or the sort of people who thought the ending of Lost was a bummer. This is a film with some answers (it's relatively straight-forward, if you think about it), but it doesn't just go out and state the characters' motives. There's nothing expositional about Inherent Vice, which seems odd considering that this is a movie with a wealth of dialogue. The movie instead has people talking like they normally do-much like Wild Tales earlier this week, Inherent Vice has people repeating each other, finding new information through deduction, and occasionally running off on red herring-style tangents (in the end, it doesn't really matter, for example, that Mickey's wife is having an affair, or Benicio del Toro's character despite relatively high billing in trailers, is largely inconsequential).
The movie's at its best when it's relying on the heavy charms of Joaquin Phoenix, who was my favorite part of the film. He's so unsure, so jonesed out of his mind, that you half expect Tommy Chong to show up with a van, but he's still very good at his job, and the character himself unfolds rather nicely as we learn he's a strong detective behind the ludicrousness, and we learn so much about the case along with him (as I believe he's in every scene of the movie). The rest of the cast is sporadic, in my opinion. For every performance like Reese Witherspoon's, who has razor sharp comic instincts and is a jolt throughout, there's something banal and gaudy like Martin Short's coke-snorting dentist. The film's most noted supporting players (Waterston and Brolin) were a mixed bag for me. Both are brilliant at times (I loved Waterston's dreamy-eyed entrance into the movie and Brolin's pancake scene is every bit as amusing as the trailer makes out), but in a film where everyone borders reality, they're the only two characters that stretch outside of it; no one is as intoxicating as Shasta or as abrasive as Brolin's Bigfoot.
The film's best friend is the script, which is aided heavily by Thomas Pynchon's penchant for spectacular monikers (my personal favorite: Japonica Fenway, which sounds like a sports car and that totally fits the character). The lines are irresistible despite not resembling any sort of speaking pattern you would find in real life. I also loved the way that we don't get the story dumbed-down. All of the pieces of the film are definitely there, and you can follow everything, but the film meanders, occasionally unsuccessfully, which is likely the reason that some critics haven't embraced this film as warmly as would be expected for a PTA movie. Still, the patter is exceptional and the comedy usually lands. It's the sort of movie that you watch and realize that it wasn't really made for its time slot-it was made for midnight movie marathons years from now, where people will dress up in one of Mark Bridges' absurdly stylized costumes and quote lines like "he's technically Jewish but wants to be a Nazi."
Those were my thoughts on this complicated, but not unpleasant film (it's grown on me with two days to mull)-what about yours? Josh Brolin got mad plaudits for the film-anyone amongst that crowd? Anyone think it can or should take one of those two Oscars? Share below!
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