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Joaquin Phoenix is a stoner private eye in Inherent Vice.
C-Director Paul Thomas Anderson tries to accomplish the seemingly impossible in Inherent Vice, namely, adopting one of Thomas Pynchon’s bizarre novels for the screen. The results are somewhat fitting for a movie about the 1970-era drug subculture. While at times hilarious, the movie in general plays out like a typical stoner drug-fueled fantasy: overly long, often boring and even more often nearly incoherent.
Joaquin Phoenix stars as Doc Sportello, a private eye who’s almost always drunk or stoned. He’s involved in two separate cases that really aren’t separate: finding a missing real estate tycoon and finding a missing saxophone player (Owen Wilson). Both cases have him butting heads with hard ass cop Josh Brolin. That brief synopsis sounds like a typical PI film, but Inherent Vice plays more like a remake of a Cheech and Chong movie with a considerably better cast.
The period detail in Inherent Vice in terms of music and costuming is perfect, but Anderson and Phoenix are both far too young to have any real insight into the drug culture of that era, so they try to create humor by having Doc act perpetually confused. The result is a movie that drifts from one comic moment to another, with a lot of boredom in between.
Continue reading on Inherent Vice: Mini-Review
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