Breaking the 1st MacMahonian Commandment (though that's what it's there for) I was drawn to Inherent Vice more out of curiosity towards the Thomas Pynchon adaptation (the 2nd greatest living American writer, perhaps ex-aequo with A L Doctorow, in the The MacMahonian's reckoning) than towards the newest Paul Thomas Anderson film, a director to whom The MacMahonian's devotion (his previous The Master, 2012, excepted) is qualified.
Inherent Vice is Paul Thomas Anderson ´s 7th feature film, and it belongs firmly to the campy-cockamamie school of film directing that elicits the The MacMahonian's detached amusement, though little admiration and less love. Of his previous output, I've only not seen his 1st (Hard Eight, 1996) and although seldom bored and acknowledging his virtuoso use of long tracking shots, I'm more often put off by his constant, if admittedly entertaining, attempts at épater le bourgeois (viz. the celebrated frog rain sequence in Magnolia, 1999).
Inherent Vice is, as alluded to above, an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's eponymous novel, an intricate noir-like story, set in SoCal, like many of Anderson's films and Pynchon's books, in 1970. It's like The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946) meets The Big Lebowski (Coen Brothers, 1998) meets Easy Rider (Denis Hopper, 1969). Try (or, as in my case, rapidly give up) making sense of the plot involving dope-head hippie private eye Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix, just cruising along, like the rest of the cast, honourably exceptions being Katherine Waterston, playing Shasta Fay Hepworth, a costumer/occasional lover of the “Doc”s, and Josh Brolin, playing Lt. Det. Christian F. "Bigfoot" Bjornsenn, a hard boiled civil rights abusing police officer) to and fro-ing attempting to solve an increasingly incomprehensible number of cases involving suspected murders, feared kidnappings , assorted SoCal gangs and drug trafficking.
The films "concept" is neo-noir with 70s hippie SoCal atmosphere instead of 40s retro SoCal atmosphere. In this respect, Vice is a feast for the eyes: I mean, I wasn't there when it happened but I suspect SoCal in Vice looks more 70ish than it did in the flesh back in the day. That and the numerous Pynchon dialogue gems (of which Josh Brolin delivers the best, or the better, crowned with his repeated broken Japanese attempts at ordering more pancakes at a Japanese-run diner: “MOTTO PANEKEKKU!!!”) make for stimulating, if vapid, viewing, to which the luscious soundtrack (by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood) also assists. To be fair, the films 148 minutes run effortlessly and entertainingly, but also forgettably, which would be no problem were it not for the feeling of intended “deepness” Anderson's films tend to leave (reportedly, he quotes Martin Scorsese, Orson Welles an Stanley Kubrick as his main influences; right; and mine are Many Farber and Andrew Sarris; and Charles Dickens).
The MacMahonian's verdict on Anderson is he aims to be Kubrick/Welles but ends up being a poor (and pretentious) man's Coen/Landis. The verdict on Vice is it's like Brick (Rian Johnson, 2005), but much less clever and fun.