Inherent Vice

Inherent Vice is a peculiar, unpredictable, and mischievous film. That's where its charm, but also its risk, lies. It's nice for once not to follow a predictable genre routine, but when the end credits roll, it's also easy to shrug your shoulders and ask what the author actually wanted to say... The screenplay seems like it was written by several screenwriters who periodically each got their say. Although they received the same instructions, each one is in the realm of a different genre. There are also other explanations at play. It could all be attributed to fluctuating levels of drugs in the veins of a single screenwriter. At certain moments, the characters and events in the film fall into psychotic states, and the film world sheds its veneer of normalcy. Perhaps the film's protagonist himself succumbs to psychotic states, through whose eyes we watch the film. He once chose too easy a way to temporarily improve his unsatisfactory existence, and he increasingly loses control over his senses and actions. I can't say that I was enchanted by it, the film doesn't have an attractive facade or innards, it's difficult to identify with anyone or anything, and the characters are more weird than cool. However, the originality saves the film quite a bit. The director may confuse many people with it but the film is firmly under his control and he works with the best that the acting industry currently has to offer. Moreover, the message of this morally ambiguous tale is ultimately more convincing than the preaching of social authorities and the warnings of medical professionals. Overall impression: 75%. (09/11/2017)

Paul Thomas Anderson obviously likes to play and experiment. He tries out the length of the scene, the shot, the distance of the camera, the angle of the shot, different forms of humor, absurd situations. And then he makes a film out of it, which contains an incredible amount of strange characters, where you don't care about any of them. The whole thing lasts two and a half hours, but you still think it's simply interesting and that it's quite entertaining in places. (03/06/2015)

A conversation comedy polished to the final detail, which is too long, while it couldn’t be any shorter. Pynchon is a master of language, he is quite generous with refined words, but even so his dialogs are natural, full of cutting humor and hidden insinuations. Anderson honors this and attempts at maximum faithfulness to the original. His directing talent is supported by quality acting performances, superb production design and again the mass of details that take care of much of the comedy in this otherwise multi-genre detective movie. Strongly not recommended for regular movie consumers. What's Up, Doc? (02/18/2015)

Already after watching the trailer I thought that Inherent Vice was a pretty weird and crazy movie. However, everything made it seem like the number of famous actors, who I personally often look for in the movies, couldn’t disappoint me. But they did. Joaquin Phoenix again played an extremist, but in this case, he had his heart in a better place than usual and he was also a rebel. Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro or Josh Brolin complemented him perfectly. It’s a pity they were all so deadly serious. Even Joaquin, but you were not able to perceive him as such under any circumstances, so his character had the completely opposite effect. Nevertheless, the characters are the only interesting thing about this movie. The length of it makes you want to kill yourself, the story is really confusing and several times I had a feeling I was watching a movie that just goes on and on but nothing is happening at all. I cannot get rid of the feeling that Inherent Vice seemed weird already from the trailer, and even after watching it I still consider it weird and I am surprised that these actors need to experiment like this. I accept that Paul Thomas Anderson as a director is quite renowned in Hollywood, but this whole mix of everything, the atmosphere from the thirties and the noir crime story was really not my cup of tea. (06/08/2015)

The obviously stoned Paul Thomas Anderson let his imagination run wild and made a self-absorbed retro hippie crime parody where nothing makes sense. I think we already had David Lynch for the WTF stuff, and it’s gone out of fashion. Unwatchable 150 minutes. (07/15/2017)