Inherent Vice

Glad not to be a professional film critic - I would not know what to say. Great casting. Fun costumes. Some scenes give you the feeling of other scenes you might have seen somewhere else. Kind of like an instant classic rehash. Do not make the mistake to follow the plot. There is a higher chaos beneath us all. Probably good material to test the effects of various psychoactive substances on people who make an effort of connecting dots when watching movies. You do not need substances though. There are dots all right but there is no coherent picture that is good for everybody. Any connection you draw is fine. Maybe that is the message.

I usually follow the guidance of amazon (I believe it to be the owner of this site) and try to give points between one and ten. Impossible here. I consider that the film's quality.

I am writing this review after my second try: this time I went a little more far in but, once again, I had to give up.

What a wasted potential, in my opinion!

A superb cast and a great director trying to serve a never-ending elements additions to a random story, which already has nothing really original.

As many other people wrote here, the plot is too intricate, as well as the amount of character who pop up every scene after the other.

Imagine yourself tryng to write The Big Lebowski in a Tarantinian style, with a thousand characters in a hundred sub-plots connected to some other (but not to each other) and doing your best to not lose your mind over it.

Someone said this was meant to be, they wanted to recreate the structure and the mood of its source material: I get it but, still, was it the best choice? In my opinion, it wasn't.

When a story is that complicated, it kicks me off the movie; and when that happens, you have a half of a movie.

I like and respect PTA but I think this film is the Moby Dick of filmmaking: you know it's something valuable but you just can't keep up with it!

In 1970, drug-fueled Los Angeles detective Larry "Doc" Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) investigates the disappearance of a former girlfriend.

Whether or not Los Angeles was like this in 1970 does not matter. For the sake of the story, this is the world Doc Sportello lives in, and it is one crazy place: drug cartels, ouija boards, crooked cops and hippie cults.

The problem with this film, and what seems to turn most people off, is the very complex plot. Following in the same vein as "The Long Goodbye" or "The Big Lebowski", this is a world where many seemingly unrelated worlds intersect. And it is brilliant. Unfortunately, it is very hard to follow and that will ruin it for many people. Or, at best, it will make them want to watch it two or three times until it all starts to click.

I loved this film. A lot of people don't like this film because the plot is very confusing and hard to follow but the whole message of the film is that sometimes life doesn't wrap things up in a nice little bow and sometimes everything doesn't come together in the end. I've seen this film a few times now and I like it more everytime I see it. The first time I didn't really like it because I was trying to keep up and get my head around the plot but after I became enlightened to the theme, then I was just able to sit back and experience the journey. It is a great character study. Joaquín pheonix is fantastic and his character is great, all the characters and performances in this film are great and fun, Josh Brolin works really well and had great chemistry with Pheonix, and Martin Short was hilarious when he came into the film he was amazing. There were so many great moments and great lines scattered about like when he visits the golden fang institute. The dialogue on the whole is inconsistent as a lot of it is exposition for the plot but when it isn't that it was fantastic. This is one of the most enjoyable films because you don't need to worry about understanding the plot because you're not supposed to understand it and instead just sit back and relax. The directing is great as always from PTA, the film is really well made. My only criticisms are the film gets weaker in the last 20 mins or so and probably should've ended earlier and that some of the dialogue is just exposition. However I love this film on the whole, I love the soundtrack and the unsatisfying ending reflects the whole film, it reflects the character and how really he gets nothing done in the whole film. And it also reflects life, and how in life often things don't have satisfying endings.

Great mood and cinematography, memorable characters, and bizarre situations. I know that the plot is purposely nonsensical and convoluted, but the trippy atmosphere was not enough to keep me interested until the end. Trimming some extra fat would help. The absolute highlight for me was Bigfoot's character and his relationship with Doc.