I have waited too long to review this movie. As I sit down to write I am
reviewing in my mind what happened where when and how and this is a huge
mistake because I hardly had a grasp on that when I was watching the movie in
the theater. But dig this: during the movie I did not care because like the
best of Chandler-esque pot detectives (see The
Long Goodbye and The Big Lebowski)
this movie makes its money moment to moment not in the grand scheme of things and
boy is this movie filled from top to bottom with moments. It’s stacked with
jokes like the flattop of Flintstone proportions that neatly sits on Lietuenant
Detective (and SAG member) Christian F. “BigFoot” Bjornsen’s fat head.
Inherent Vice was adapted from a Thomas Pynchon novel and directed by
Paul Thomas Anderson. It is like a bonus movie from this guy in that his last
two movies each took five years to make and market. Not only is this one coming
to us within two years of his last (‘The Master’) but it is also a comedy and
certainly the funniest P.T. Anderson movie to date. There has been an
extraordinary amount of effort made here to include at least one visual gag in
every scene. Some are very good like say the “welcome” “Doc” gets to the LA
police department, Bigfoot’s son pouring him a drink, and the parking technique
of his assistant. Roger Ebert once said of Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Ocean 11’ that
it felt like a virtuoso classical pianist went down to the local honkytonk and
started riffing on some ragtime melodies for fun. That’s what this feels like
too. P.T. Anderson is slumming it with the low culture comedians. That’s
probably why this movie will not be recognized for anything even though it
should be on par with all his other high class movies.
Now for your reading enjoyment I will attempt to summarize the plot. May
the gods of Imdb guide me! This movie is about Larry “Doc” Sportello a hippie
private detective in the early 1970s of Los Angeles. I am assuming he got the
nickname ‘Doc’ because he works out of a doctor’s office. One night Doc’s
ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston) shows up needing his
help. Her boyfriend, the married real estate devloper Mickey Wolfman, may be
the target of a kidnapping plot by his wife and her boyfriend. Doc can’t turn
this request down as that girl has a hold of him the way that certain women
often do. Thus the convoluted journey begins where a murder at a whorehouse
brings him in contact with Lt. Det. Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (a perfect Josh
Brolin), which necessitates the appearance of Doc’s maritime lawyer Sauncho
Smilax, Esq. (Benicio Del Toro) and his current girlfriend Deputy D.A. Penny
Kimball (Reese Witherspoon). The FBI gets in on the case and something called
the Golden Fang, which might be a boat or something bigger leads the
increasingly convoluted storyline through other bright character spots such as
Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd D.D.S (a manic Martin Short) and Coy Harlingen (Owen Wilson).
The conversation that Doc has with Coy is perhaps the low point of clarity in
the movie since it takes place after at least an hour of hard to follow and
might consist of codespeak. I don’t know I’m not sure because I probably would
not know what they were talking about even if it wasn’t in code.
The confusing aspect of Inherent
Vice is medicated quite a bit like the confusing way of The Big Lebowski is medicated: that is
with lots of drugs and enough great stuff going on in the moment that the
viewer does not necessarily need to have a big picture in order to enjoy
himself. Perhaps the best self-contained ten minutes of the movie is the
introduction and dispensation of Martin Short, a dentist who may or may not be
one small cog in a vast conspiracy to get hippies on heroin and then sell them
everything they need to get off of heroin (heroin apparently does awful things
to your teeth). ANYWAY it is a manic creation of unbridled lust and hard drugs
before we are informed in the subsequent scene that the dentist has broken in
his neck in a trampoline accident. Of course it may not be an accident but
we’ve already moved on.
I haven’t read the book but I get the feeling that it is an irretrievably
unadaptable source and the fact that P.T. Anderson has made a good movie from
it makes the adaptation itself extraordinary. He should at least get an Oscar
nomination for the screenplay. The movie is filled to the brim with memorable
characters but Josh Brolin’s performance is one flattop head above the rest. He
too should get an Oscar nomination. Joaquin Phoenix does a wonderful job of holding
his own among the nutcases. Oh and I forgot that the movie is narrated by a
character that is kind of tangential to the whole thing. Someone explained to
me that she knows everything via stoner ESP or whatever. It works just as well.
I liked this movie quite a bit and will probably have to see it again to
get most of the jokes. I hope you see it at least once and don’t feel bad if
you can’t entirely figure what is going on. I suspect nobody can, especially
the hippies.
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