Review of Inherent Vice (2014) by Allen G — 02 Apr 2016

Certainly the weakest of Anderson's works thus far in my view but it still has those moments that only he can deliver and Joaquin fits his madcap role like a glove.

Put simply- this film is difficult to keep up with. Sure, it's mostly just a lot of dialogue but at two and a half hours, with all of the plot twists and turns, it's honestly just impossible to keep up with everything that's going on.

However, our protagonist 'Doc' also clearly has no idea what's going on at any giving moment and so Anderson has somehow managed to make confusion a pretty appealing trait in this film. It's quite funny not knowing what's going on whilst knowing that no one else knows what's going on either.

Now I'm sure to anyone familiar with the source material (which I am certainly not), this film will probably make a lot more sense and it certainly comes across as a fair interpretation of the book, or at least its wordy voice overs suggest that it is anyway.

Nonetheless, the narrative really is all over the place here and whilst that's clearly not a mistake, I can't pretend that it doesn't bother me. I'm a big Paul Thomas Anderson fan and the fact that he makes the films for himself rather than the audience is something that I certainly admire. However, in this case, as an audience member, I just felt a little left out of the loop.

This is still a fun ride though and there's plenty of brilliantly mad moments, including a lot of slapstick humour which I very much appreciated. Overall though, there's just something a little too inaccessible about this one for me.

I think the issue may just be that attempting to turn the source material into a film was just a little too ambitious. Again, having not read the book I can't confirm that but it's certainly the feeling I got as I sat for two and a half hours and still felt like the film had moved so fast that nothing had ever actually been discussed at all.

It's a beautiful looker, as you'd expect from Anderson and the cast are great with Phoenix and Brolin working brilliantly together (I'm still not an Owen Wilson fan though, I must say).

As I said- there's certainly some laughs here, however, I did see this in a cinema which was quite crowded and there was dead silence throughout (I actually felt a bit shy laughing at times!). I think this suggests that the humour here is just a bit too wacky for some and that, actually, it possibly just doesn't fit the film at all.

I think many audience members will struggle to give up on the plot (which is pretty much the only way to really enjoy this one) and they're left so confused and, possibly, frustrated, that they often don't even pick up on the comedy beats, of which there are many.

I don't know- it's a difficult one really. All I can say is that I enjoyed it overall and loved some of it but, as a Paul Thomas Anderson film, I found it a little underwhelming and it's possibly a sign that his work is starting to move into a place that's just a little too unconventional for me to follow along with. Time will tell, I guess.