Inherent Vice (2014)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson; Screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson

Based on Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

With: Joaquin Phoenix as Larry “Doc” Sportello,  a stoner PI, Josh Brolin as Lieutenant Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen, a fascist cop and sometimes TV extra, Owen Wilson as Coy Harlingen, a rat, Katherine Waterston as Shasta Fay Hepworth, a hippy chick, Reese Witherspoon as Deputy District Attorney, a waste of a good actress, Benicio del Toro as Sauncho Smilax, Esq., a stoner lawyer. A waste of a good actor, Joanna Newsom as Sortilège, who is also the narrator, Jeannie Berlin as Aunt Reet, real estate maven. A day player, Maya Rudolph as Petunia Leeway, another day player, Michael Kenneth Williams as Tariq Khalil, Michelle Sinclair as Clancy Charlock, Martin Short as Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd, D.D.S. Comic relief, Sasha Pieterse as Japonica Fenway, Martin Donovan as Crocker Fenway, Eric Roberts as Michael Z. “Mickey” Wolfmann, a real estate developer.  Really, where?

Best review of this movie:

“Inherent vice is the tendency in physical objects to deteriorate because of the fundamental instability of the components of which they are made, as opposed to deterioration caused by external forces”

–Wikipedia

Inherent Vice is what Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye would be like is the detectives were the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers (Google it, Gen Xers).

I am not really clear on the plot, but it is clear neither was Paul Thomas Anderson.  He lacked the vision thing so necessary to the pretense of many directors, and so unnecessary to reviews.  A director’s vision, in the opinion of this reviewer, is a largely a fiction invented by snooty critics, some snooty East coast critics in order to justify their particular prejudice. The film “auteur”, conjured up by people who do not have the slightest idea how movies are made. Some directors deserve the title auteur, most do not.  Some do not deserve the title Director. (The “A Film By” credit preceding the film’s title is one of the best and funniest jokes cracked in Hollywood since the Marx Brothers.  One can only speculate what Irving Thalberg would say).

Do I have any business reviewing a movie when I had only a vague understanding of the plot?  Of course I do. I am entitled to the same consideration as the highly paid and largely useless television reviewers who, in the opinion of the late critic John Simon, should be wearing a sign reading  “CHARLATAN”.

Inherent Vice appears to be a satire on the detective story, one done much better and more economically by Robert Altman with his The Long Goodbye (1973). Vice is very much a shaggy dog story. “Shit happens.”

Larry “Doc” Sportello is a stoner PI you would not send for a pack of cigarettes, let alone to find a missing person. He shares office space with a feel-good doctor, and lives in a fictional beach city, a sort of refuge for what remains of the 60s Freak Culture in 1970 Southern California.  He is the victim of the occasional outrage by a corrupt fascist police detective with the handle Bigfoot, who has a second career as an extra on TV cop shows.

Doc seems to spend his time drinking beer and smoking dope in a continuing effort to transform himself into a houseplant.  A cabbage-head Alice in LA wonderland. His persistent vegetative state is interrupted by the arrival of his ex-girlfriend, Shasta Fay Hepworth, played by the adorable Katherine Waterston (if you ever wondered what she looked like naked, this movie is your best opportunity) She wants Doc to prevent her monster real estate developer boyfriend Michael Z. “Mickey” Wolfmann from a kidnapping by his wife and her lover. Their diabolical plan is to have him committed to a funny farm. A developer out of the way in a nuthouse where he can not develop anything but his neurosis?  Sold! Next case.

What follows is a confused, pointless story involving the entire cast in ways no one is really sure of.  The narrator is no help. The Aryan Brotherhood, Black Guerrilla Family, a cult that apparently runs the state, a drug cartel with its own high profile yacht, the FBI, an LAPD sponsored hitman/loan shark, a drug pushing dentist, and an undercover police informant are all in the mix. It’s tiresome just thinking about it.

Rather than waste time watching Inherent Vice, rent Murder, My Sweet (1944) with Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe.