Inherent Vice (2014)

hyped garbage

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

I generally enjoy slow moving noir films but Inherent Vice was incomprehensible to me. What was happening here? and if the idea was to cause confusion what is the point of it all. Maybe the point of the film was that sometimes we are part of such big confusing things that we cant possibly interpret it all. Never the less, no point in rating something i could not understand. Though PTA is one of my favourite directors this one is a miss for me. Only cool takeaway - "Inherent Vice" what a beautiful phrase. And maybe Inherent Vice's vice is inherent vice as it draws to a close.

Anybody who is easily frustrated by a convoluted and incoherent movie plot should probably give 'Inherent Vice' a miss, otherwise the TV might not escape the two-and-a-half hours damage free. This film makes very little sense from the first scene to the last and the ridiculously long running length makes it even more difficult to endure. There's so much going on in this film that it's near impossible to follow what's happening and connect the dots. Many of the scenes have no explanation and seem totally unrelated to anything that's happened previously. I found the whole thing near impossible to follow and even as I write this review, I'm still at a loss as to what actually happened in 'Inherent Vice'. It's a bizarre, confusing and very frustrating movie.

This movie is a convoluted mess, I can't even explain what the story line is. Phoenix is in every scene, never sitting up normally, always lying down, or sprawled on the floor after a pummeling, and constantly smoking weed, and there's the annoying voice over. If you like David Lynch movies then this movie is for you. Don't try to make sense of it, just marvel that someone would waste their time trying to adapt it from a book that is ranked No. 32,833 on Amazon. It rambles on so much that you will completely forget what the main plot is supposed to be. Case in point: There are 110 cast members listed in the credits, I defy anyone to recall what was said by any one of them, and more importantly how they contributed to the plot. The budget was $20 million, small in comparison to the typical Hollywood film and the opening weekend was an abysmal $328,000, word of mouth certainly worked in this case. Save yourself the cost of renting it and just have someone you really don't care for explain the plot to you, in depth, so you can have another reason to dislike that person even more.

Less than 30 minutes into this self-absorbed slugfest of a movie I felt like I'd been pumped full of valium and zombified. Why make a movie this lacklustre? Perhaps I'm missing the point. Maybe Inherent Vice is actually some kind of subtlety-laced masterpiece of understated nuance and restraint, but to me it was unforgivably boring. I lasted until the scene at the massage parlour reception desk, which I can only describe as the most uncomfortably vacuous 3 minutes of cinema in living memory. How could anyone script that scene without immediately wanting to rip up and burn everything they've ever written? Terrible.As it happens, the recreation of 1970s post-hippie fallout America looked pretty spot on to me, but that counts for zero when you lend it to a movie that's about as entertaining as watching stick insects do tai chi. Awful.