Inherent Vice Review- By Brent Willis Bechtel (Guest Writer)

Title:Inherent Vice
Year: 2014
Director:Paul Thomas Anderson
Country: US
Language:English

Occasionally at The Good, The Bad and the Critic we will bring in a special guest writer to review a flick that they feel passionately about. Today's guest writer is Brent Willis Bechtel who absolutely despises Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice. It is polarizing to the film community; as many love it as they do hate it. I have not seen this film yet, but I do love Anderson's filmography thus far. I revisit his 90's masterpiece Boogie Nights at least twice a year. 

In 1970, drug-fueled Los Angeles detective Larry "Doc" Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) investigates the disappearance of a former girlfriend. It's a stoner kidnapping romp based upon the novel by Thomas Pynchon.

"The film did not even feel very "cinematic" after experiencing the vast vacant external landscapes of  Anderson's other flicks, like There Will Be Blood and the intense interior psycho sexual tense arenas of The Master . Robert Elsworth's photography was, as expected, very well done, but the majority of the film felt staged and claustrophobic, as if all the interiors were set on a theater stage. The metropolitan area of Los Angles felt vacant and empty. Were the streets cleared for filming due to some impending disaster? It did not feel free. There was a sense of purposeful constriction to a number of scenes. At times, the film simply flirted with boredom despite wonderfully engaging performances from Joaquin Phoenix as "Doc", Josh Brolin as "Bigfoot Bjornsen"(arguably the best performance of his career),an endearing turn by Katherine Waterston as "Shasta" Fay Hepworth, and a delightfully comical cameo turn from Martin Short as "Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd". There were many moments where the humor just evaporated into thin air.

Readers of Pynchon's original novel will wonder why Anderson chose to let so many plotlines dangle.. Jade's friend Bambi has a much  larger role in the book, including the connection between Puck Beaverton and another male whom he is having at least a bi-sexual relationship with. The Spotted Dick house was a turning point in the novel that was glossed over in the movie, along with a trip sequence in which Doc sees Shasta on the Golden Fang boat, both of which would have made for great cinematic sequences. Then the entire trip to Vegas, in which more important plot lines are revealed (it was there that Doc sees Wolfmann for the first time in FBI custody), the visit to Wolfmann's "free living" community, which is the entire reason for the plot,  is also completely left out! I just don't get it. PTA had all the structure for a great movie in Pynchon's novel. Why include the "pussy eater" scene, but cut all the rest of the sex scenes? There was no development of Denis at all, and the inclusion of an imaginary narrator was ludicrous. Anderson really dropped the ball on what could have been a grand movie on a comic scale with "The Big Lebowski". It was the "lovechild" of Up In Smoke and The Long Goodbye with a dash of Chinatown thrown in.

As great as the original score by Jonny Greenwood was, there were times when he seemed to dance with the ghosts of Bela Bartok and Olivier Messien too often. There was a melodramatic aural subtext that was a too much for me in the first encounter between Doc and Shasta. It felt forced and awkward and was overkill; too serious just for the sake of being so. Kudos must be given to the one hit pop tunes Anderson chose to sprinkle throughout the film.

I know Anderson was taking his foot off the gas pedal of his director's bus with this film, but it just didn't quite jive as whole for me. After his previous three films, it felt like P.T. hid a bump in the road. I don't mind it as long as it is just a one time incident. The man is too talented to deter as he moves forward into what should be the prime time of his career. My love of his overall body of work has lost a small bit of steam."  3/5