The best way to describe Inherent Vice is to say it’s a bit like The Big Lebowski only half as funny and twice as stoned. It’s based on a Thomas Pynchon novel they said was unfilmable—and I’m not quite sure that director Paul Thomas Anderson, despite his many gifts, has convinced me otherwise. That being said, it’s an achievement of sorts, in its own way. Um, kind of.
I’d tell you the plot, but it would require diagrams and very good drugs. But the basic gist is this: The ever-committed Joaquin Phoenix plays private detective Larry “Doc” Sportello. It’s LA in 1970 and the idea of hippies vs. squares is still quite prevalent—and because it’s in the wake of the Charles Manson murders, an air of mistrust pervades. If Doc is to represent the hippie in this equation then Det. Christian “Bigfoot” Bjornson (Josh Brolin) represents the square. (Although his affinity for sucking luxuriously on chocolate dipped banana pops is never explained.) The flat-topped Bigfoot keeps hauling the mutton-chopped Doc into the police department for questioning, but a certain grudging affection and even simpatico exists between the two seeming opposites.
Anyhoo, as the film starts, Doc is visited by his sexy, sun-kissed ex girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterson), this stoner noir’s version of the femme fatale. She needs Doc’s help because she’s in over her head with her billionaire developer boyfriend (Eric Roberts) whose ex wife is behind a plot to kidnap and blackmail him. In his normal state of baffled, curious, paranoid horniness, Doc sets off the help sort things out, first running across a recovering addict (Jena Malone), looking for her possibly dead musician husband (Owen Wilson), who may or may not be an FBI informant. There are also massage parlors, Nazi cults, a corrupt drug-peddling dentist (Martin Short), and decadent LA house parties along the way. The film runs for a somewhat punishing 148 minutes.
There were things I loved: The wonderfully droll and seductive narration by Doc’s friend Sortilege (Joanna Newsome), although like many other things in the film, I was never quite sure how she fit into the main action and why she was given the task of narrating it. Joaquin Phoenix’s ever changing hairdos—from twists to pompadours, each one more ludicrous than the next—and his little notepads, where he scrolled down seemingly helpful notes that in fact demonstrated his own befuddlement. Josh Brolin demanding, “Moto panacaku” (“more pancakes”) in a Japanese diner, because, well, why wouldn’t he? And of course, I loved the funky, psychedelic soundtrack, a PTA specialty.
But it wasn’t enough for the film to come together as a cohesive whole. Then again, it never intended to. The film absolutely achieves its intended mood of hazy, brain-addled delirium. Indeed, I believe that Paul Thomas Anderson made exactly the film he wanted to make with Inherent Vice. I’m just not sure it was the film I wanted to watch.