Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

Unlike Anderson's big hits of the '90s, this somewhat slipped under the radar of moviegoers despite a fair number of critical plaudits and an all-star cast. It may be that having Joaquin Phoenix as the lead these days automatically stamps a film as arthouse, if being based on a Pynchon novel didn't already do that. Regardless, it's a diverting enough leisurely saunter in a sardonic noir vein through the Los Angeles of the flower power era, now as mythical as the Wild West with its retro fascist cops (yes, Josh Brolin brings his lantern jaw along to play the main one of these again) and antediluvian hippies and the Vietnam war and the Mansons looming somewhere in the background,
Phoenix's character, a private eye investigating the disappearance of his ex and her millionaire sugar daddy, is more or less like The Dude if he actually committed himself to do a real job, bumbling and mumbling from encounter to encounter powered by a non-stop chain of spliffs and somehow coming up trumps at the end, with the overall tone reminiscent of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, for example (in fact Downey Jr. was originally lined up for the role). The period flavour is strong, the dialogue is cute and it takes two and a half hours to arrive pretty much where it started, with the audience wondering where they've just been. This is probably a case of mission accomplished on the part of the director, but a bit more substance wouldn't have hurt either.

6/10