#Inherent vice pancakes full
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Let's hope it never crests.'Japanese Humor' in PTA's 'Licorice Pizza' and 'Inherent Vice' This is a director riding high on a wave he himselfĬreated by cannonballing into the deep end. With the same steady eye that's made him a juggernaut of the dramatic.Īnd while some may find its strange, stream-of-consciousness approach toīe grating, others will be enthralled with each and every gorgeouslyĬomposed frame.

Reimagines the detective game through the bleary eyes of aĬounterculture hero of a bygone era. Make no mistake, Inherent Vice is a surrealist comedy above all, a film that, like The Big Lebowski, Not since Boogie Nights has Anderson had so much fun toying with taboos. That blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. To disclose-flit around Doc's periphery, some adding to the plot, Machiavellian saxophonist, and one SNL alum with a role too juicy Lawyer, Reese Witherspoon as his sometimes-girlfriend, Owen Wilson as a Other characters-Benicio Del Toro as Doc's Touching, terrifying and ridiculous as the straight-laced yang to Doc'sĬhemically enhanced yin. Hilarious personalities to emerge in years, manages to be at once Is the way these characters interact with one another, in ways seemingly Per usual, Anderson's film is carried by excellent character work.īut what makes Inherent Vice his most thoroughly enjoyable film Once you let go of the need for clarityĪnd closure, you can appreciate a director working at the top of his Voice-over provided by a possibly imaginary narrator who gets distractedĪs Doc gets higher-it only makes sense that most ends are of the dead Since we're in his head for the entirety of the film-including a

#Inherent vice pancakes free

In Doc's world, dark alleys might lead to free dope or to violence, and But Anderson is taking a cue from the convoluted plots of theĬlassics: everything from The Maltese Falcon to The Long Goodbye and Chinatown.

#Inherent vice pancakes full

Scene with the giddy weirdness of a teenager with a head full ofĬhronic. This might prove frustrating to some, as the film meanders from scene to It takes very, very little time for Inherent Vice'sĬore mystery to take a backseat to the lunatic characters thatĭoc-played with ethereal charisma by a never-better Phoenix-encounters. Hippies and brags about his myriad civil rights violations. All the while, he's feverishlyĭogged by police detective Christian 'Bigfoot' Bjornsen (Josh Brolin) aįlat-topped wannabe actor who takes great pleasure in stomping over Through the stony underworld of the '70s. Overthrow a powerful construction magnate. (Katherine Waterston), disappears before tipping him off about a plot to Said private detective is less Sam Spade than Wavy Gravy, a pot-addledįormer doper named Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) whose ex, Shasta Here, though, Anderson is working in one of the most time-worn genres of all: the detective story. This is the auteur who crafted the hyper-emotional human tapestry of Magnolia, the dark character studies of The Master and There Will Be Blood and the fantastical romance of Punch-Drunk Love. It's also not for all tastes, but hey, that's Anderson. Whores, Manson acolytes, dentists, cops, criminals and all manner ofįreaks commingle in the grimy tide pools.

The beaches of '70s Los AngelesĪre populated with human flotsam. Paul Thomas Anderson's rollicking adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's 2009