Warner Brothers

R. 148 min

I'll bet there were people hanging around the Beatles who pretended that Yoko Ono's art, music and films Avant grade and brilliant for fear of pissing off John Lennon and not being allowed to hang around anymore.

Paul Thomas Anderson is certainly among the in crowd and a favorite of the critical Illuminati. His films (including MAGNOLIA, BOOGIE NIGHTS, THERE WILL BE BLOOD and THE MASTER) are unique and thought provoking and feature top notch performances from some of America's finest actors. His latest production is called INHERENT VICE and the closest description I can think of is CHEECH AND CHONG meet CHINATOWN.

That's because it's a period crime with sexual overtones whose main characters probably don't spend 5 minutes between joints. Seriously.

The period is the dope infused 1970 and the location is California, man.

Our hero is Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) a hippie private investigator searching for his missing ex-girlfriend and her multi-millionaire real estate tycoon boyfriend. Doc has a symbiotic relationship with a straight arrow detective known as Bigfoot (Josh Brolin) despite their mutual hatred. From that point on we have a tangled mess of a plot concerning, among other stuff, a hippie musician who has been working undercover for the straight community and now want out, the Golden Fang which is a money laundering organization or a collective of dental professionals or a heroin smuggling operation (or a coven of vampires or something), murders, kidnapping, a kinky sex ring and a lot dope smoking. What it all adds up to, friends and neighbors, is anybody's guess. All I can say is it might be more interesting had I fired one up before entering the theater.

Even if you could decipher the apparently meaningless happenings here I cant imagine caring about the outcome one way or the other.

That being said, none of the stars not Phoenix, Brolin, Reese Witherspoon, Martin Short or any of the cast turns in a bad performance it's just a ridiculous and boring story that good acting cant salvage. Not to mention it's nearly two and a half hours.

I read one smug ad blurb that said something like "inherent vice may be frustrating for audiences who demand total coherence." Well no shit Sherlock, I think is will frustrate audiences who demand even tiny a semblance of coherence.

It's going to be interesting to see how many of the mainstream critics disagree with me but if they do I'm telling you its probably one of those situations when nobody wants to look uncool. I personally wanted to love it as much as his other projects just because it's Ghoulardis son, but I just couldn't.

D

WSS