Regarding Inherent Vice

Regarding Inherent Vice
Or: How Forgettable Would the Big Lebowski Have Been if Every Scene Was Five Minutes Longer?
**

By Tom Johnson

I suppose at this point, it should be difficult to be disappointed by Paul Thomas Anderson movies. We should have learned long ago that disappointment is incongruous with PTA. PTA makes whatever movie he wants and sometimes they can be a source of awe and that should be about as much as you think about that. Being disappointed by a PTA movie is like being disappointed by not winning the lottery that one time.

And yet, what are you left with at the end of Inherent Vice, aside from a distinct impression that the movie was decidedly less than it feels like it should have been. Less fun. Less sharp. Less beautiful. Less of everything other than run time, really. Certainly less than the sum of its parts – to be certain it has a laundry list of pretty impressive parts, some of which are absolutely fun in the moment, but taken as a whole, they fail to really hit the mark.

Inherent Vice’s fundamental sin is its pacing. PTA films are known for their ponderousness, often approaching if not exceeding two and a half hours. But rarely does he deal with such obvious levity, and the last time he did – and with great effect with his Punch Drunk Love – he did so in just over ninety minutes.  Here, the glacial pace drags the film irreparably down. There is plenty in the film that suggest that it’s a comedy, but the end result is a comedy with an utter disregard for comedic timing. Indeed, Inherent Vice seems almost like a master class in how not to pace a comedic film, and the importance of pace and comedic timing particularly against such peers as the Big Lebowski or the Coen Brothers' Best Picture Victory Lap, Burn After Reading. There is no better way to understand why a joke falls flat instead of soars than to watch these three in succession.

It’s a peculiar effect Inherent Vice has. It seems to hit all of the notes that PTA wants to, it just lingers for several minutes too long in almost every scene and there are too many needlessly talky scenes that disrupt all of the often great slapstick. The performances are almost universally delightful, particularly the comic turn by continually underrated Joaquin Phoenix. Most of the endless string of cameos hit their mark. I was charmed by Joanna Newsom’s voice over work. And yet, what does it all add up to? Certainly not as much as I had hoped. And yet, it’s hard to call it disappointment. It’s simply the work of Paul Thomas Andersen.