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Inherent Vice Movie Review

Inherent Vice is a 2014 neo-noir crime film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Joaquin Phoenix. It’s a very frustrating movie.

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“It’s groovy being insane man, where you at?“

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It follows Doc, a well-intentioned but inept stoner, hippie, and private investigator in 1970, who is embroiled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld while investigating three cases interrelated by the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend and her new wealthy boyfriend. This is a premise, but the story is an utter failure. You would think by the premise that you are in for some great old-fashioned noir storytelling, but you would be wrong. The movie is about nothing at all.

Based on a book by the supposedly impenetrable mind of Thomas Pynchon, this story never should have been adapted to the big screen. It’s just ill-fitting in its every area, leading to an ineptly paced, horribly written and painfully empty viewing experience. Nothing ever happens here, there are no interesting themes at sight and the movie is two and a half hours long, thus it proved to be an excruciatingly boring and pointless watch.

I also did not care for Phoenix’s performance. He is basically playing himself as this strange, off-putting man is very unlikable and uninteresting. It’s a typical role for the actor, one that he can do in his sleep, but that effortlessness didn’t make it more memorable by any stretch of the imagination.

Josh Brolin is actually quite memorable himself. His lines of dialogue are crude, but it works as he was quite funny, the only funny part of the movie to be honest. Others are all forgettable with Katherine Waterston being saddled horribly with such an unflattering, overly sexualized role. The movie’s sex scenes were uninteresting and uninspired.

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Some have characterized Inherent Vice as a comedy, which is ludicrous to me. The film is not dramatic nor comedic, it’s just plain dull. The cinematography, the score and some moments are quite cinematic and strong, but for the most part the movie is badly directed and horribly scripted. It’s one of this director’s worst movies and another proof that he is highly overrated.

Inherent Vice is so bad. Based on a supposedly impenetrable novel, the movie’s script is difficult to like and overly complicated, but at the end of the day empty. The characters are mostly very annoying, the neo-noir elements are discarded pretty quickly, and the excessive runtime proved to be a huge hurdle that the movie never overcame. It’s a frustrating waste of time coming from a very off-putting director.

My Rating – 2