'Inherent Vice' goes by in a pleasant haze.

AuthorNoveck, Jocelyn
PositionLiving

Byline: Jocelyn Noveck

'Inherent Vice'

A Warner Bros. release

Rating: R for drug use throughout, sexual content, graphic nudity, language and some violence

Running time: 2 hours, 28 minutes

If you're one of those who fondly recalls spending the '60s luxuriating in a pleasantly disorienting haze, well, consider "Inherent Vice'' a reunion of sorts. You'll fit right in.

If, on the other hand, your sensibility is better suited to a different era, you may have a tougher time with Paul Thomas Anderson's freewheeling, trippy, undeniably uneven adaptation of the 2009 Thomas Pynchon novel. It'll either exhilarate or exasperate you, depending on how much you crave logic, definitive answers, and clear plotlines -- all of which are in as short supply as visible skin on Joaquin Phoenix's cheeks, under those bushy mutton-chop sideburns.

Despite the film's frustrations, it must be acknowledged that Anderson -- a master of the multi-strand, multi-character, multi-meaning plot -- is the perfect director to adapt Pynchon, in terms of both craft and spirit. As to be expected, he's amassed a wholly entertaining cast, ably led by Phoenix as Doc Sportello, a beach-loving, weed-imbibing private eye who gets enmeshed in a bizarre whodunit that unfolds like an onion laced with LSD.

The action takes place in 1970, to be precise, just as the '60s are about to morph into something different -- not that Sportello seems all too conscious of that. He lives and works, but mostly smokes pot, in fictional Gordita Beach, where, one day, his old girlfriend pops by. Shasta Fay Hepworth (newcomer Katherine Waterston, winsome and appealing) tells Doc about her current flame, real estate magnate Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts). Seems the rich guy's icy British wife -- and HER boyfriend -- are plotting to kidnap Mickey and maybe toss him into a loony bin, with her help. What should she do?

And then poor Mickey AND Shasta disappear.

Meanwhile, there's Hope Harlingen (Jena Malone), a former addict with an impressive set of false teeth, trying to track down her missing husband, Coy, a sax player who may or may not be dead. Turns out that Coy (Owen Wilson, right at home here with his languid surfer-speech) has up to some crazy...

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