Inherent Vice : So much for "The Big Lebowski" and Robert Altman

Sure, it shared things with "The Big Lebowski," and perhaps Robert Altman and "The Long Goodbye," but I don't think that was an accurate representation of "Inherent Vice." I guess people want comparisons when the film seems to fit in specific genres, but I didn't find it appropriate. It was like a Paul Thomas Anderson film doing Thomas Pynchon. It's really its own film. I found it to be mostly unique.

I didn't love it, but I definitely enjoyed the ride. It was bogged down at times, but was ultimately an interesting story and narrative, and fairly enjoyable. It didn't feel like anything else, and I have to award it for that. I will watch it soon.

I'm wondering if the aforementioned comparisons brought it down a bit. Or maybe it was a bit too long and crazy for most to adore it. At any rate, I really had a blast watching it. Different, strange, eccentric, stoned. Very interesting.

The Big Lebowski was shunned by critics after its release, this one is catching its own heat(Although has an 80+ on Metascore), its a very solid film and will always be a great collection to PTAs catalog. I'm in the "I loved it" crowd, kinda for reasons you mentioned But its dropping in ratings weekly. Its better than a 6.8, thats utter BS

IMDb ratings represent the lowest common denominator. Metacritic has always been a more reliable guide.

Most of the time the scores even out but I'll give one example of the Metascore that is MUCH lower than the score on here and I dont get it Predator! It has almost an 8 on here, 36 on Meta. Weird how it works

i think people have to rely on comparisons when what they are presented with is lackluster or a flat out mess. otherwise they would just go into how it was so original. i was definitely thinking it had elements of the worst of robert altman's eccentricity after this was mercifully over. nobody to care about whatsoevernodded off twice while watching. as a big fan of anderson's it was a big disappointment.

Larry Gaylord: "a billion people come in on a day off, and they don't flip out!"

Not if you ACTUALLY enjoy it. I've since bought and rewatched this a half dozen times or so and I like it more and more. Just like The Master I found it to grow on me with each viewing. PTA knows people will rewatch and be rewarded. He's done so with almost all of his work. Even Magnolia, how do you soak in 3hrs and 15min in ONE WATCH? You can't Sure, the narrative was much more straight forward but PTA knows his fans. But hey, that's just my taste. I don't push opinion. Im sure you have your reasons for not liking it

I stand by it being The Long Goodbye with shades of Lebowski. Sure it's its own thing, but the Altman comparisons are totally valid in my opinion.

The Long Goodbye and The Big Lebowski were great films, this was not.

[ Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. ]

But the Long Goodbye and The Big Lebowski had the same split reception like Inherent Vice when they were first released, the Long Goodbye especially


If you're jivin' me my man, I say to you

Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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I think those comparisons make sense because together they start to form a pretty coherent subgenre of noir, I mean noir films that capitalize on some noir expectations while subverting others by altering tone, introducing humor, and substituting a somewhat incompetent hero for the expected hardboiled detective. There are a lot of outright parodies of noir and detective noir films, but I think the three films mentioned in your OP are ones that use a satirical formula to tell a good and humane story.

I remember being disappointed by Big Lebowski the first time I saw it. That was coming off of Fargo (and all the other great, early Coen bros films), so ti didn't seem to fit in. Now I love Lebowski like every good person should.

Hopefully Inherent Vice is similar. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe when I'm not trying to figure out what's going on with the plot, I'll be able to sit back and enjoy the performances, visuals, ect. It's definitely a great looking film. But at 2.5 hours, it's really long for this type of plot.

At least I know I need to watch it again, there's a lot going on. I just hope it all adds up to something bigger than the sum of the parts.

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Now I love Lebowski like every good person should.

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The Dude abides.

Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Rush : the REAL Holy Trinity

I love this movie. The performances are fabulous (Joaquin Phoenix proves he really can do anything - he's on screen almost every second) and it's hilarious.

I also love The Big L and The Long Goodbye, but I think Paul Thomas Anderson expanded the genre. There are unique scenes and a few in which he managed a surreal Chinatown ambiance.

I felt the same way about Lebowski. Add A serious Man, Burn after reading to that list. Now I like them all. I was tempted to stop watching Inherent Vice, which I almost never do and I attribute some of that to being tired, but now I really love it and bought a copy so I can watch repeatedly and catch more things I missed.

I get why people don't like it, but I'm the type who likes unfolding investigations and hidden messages and subtlety. People seem to Gravitate to Boogey Nights and other PTA titles more, because they are more conventional narratives and don't require much work.
15-20 years ago I might have hated this movie, but the internet makes it easier to investigate and decode things now. In doing so for other movies, it gave me the ability to more easily decode this one. Most people prefer to be spoon fed or watch super heroes these days.

The reason I compare it with The Big Lebowski is because you watch it once and you're like "eh', but then you watch it again, and again, you think you're doing it to understand the complex plot more, but you're really doing it because it gets better every time, you notice new things each time, and after enough viewings you see the masterpiece.

This movie wanted to be a good one (especially in the second half), but for whatever reason the director seemed unable to pull it off.

There was so much wrong with this movie I am not entirely sure where to begin. Suffice to say that it is underwhelming, especially for an Anderson film.

It tried to have interesting dialogue, it tried to have interesting characters, it tried to have a good story. It failed in all these regards.

It didn't try hard enough to make us care about the occurrences, and it seemed to hope that we would care about the narrative from the moment the film begins, instead of gradually building for us this world and then unfolding carefully into the plot (you know, like most movies do).

Another problem is that the film felt far too structural and organized and stiff, almost like it would make for a better stageplay. Even the actors' performances (whether they were good or not) often felt uninspired, disjointed, and lingering in the balance of cinematic purgatory. Adding insult to this injury is the long extended scenes of dialog and character interaction reminiscent of something one would find in a Tarantino or Scorsese film, as if this movie had a story actually engaging enough to make us appreciate such scenes.

The voiceover narration weakly added very little clarity to the tale. The story felt hardly focused and was the opposite of concise and cohesive, so much that it makes L.A. Confidential look like kindergarteners' reader-friendly material.

The film probably should have realized itself as a comedy more smoothly from the beginning than seeming like some sort of uneven mishmash that feels as though it hastily bypassed the (imperatively) nurturing qualities of the pre-production phase. Even the humor attempts felt poorly executed most of the time. The middle-fingers, the awkward looks, the licking of popsicles, etc.


I want to see Anderson make another damn-good film as much as your average Anderson fan. However, I am not so in love that I fail to see how this movie wanted to be an Anderson film more than it actually pulled off being an Anderson film. What a waste for one of this generation's greatest directors


Don't be fooled by the terrific set design and fantastic cinematography (symmetrically screaming "Kubrick!" at us in several shots). Something went wrong with the fruition of this one; perhaps a classic case of style over material, something I never thought I'd accuse PTA of.




I'm not a control freak, I just like things my way

DreTam2000, you absolutely nailed it.

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It didn't try hard enough to make us care about the occurrences, and it seemed to hope that we would care about the narrative from the moment the film begins, instead of gradually building for us this world and then unfolding carefully into the plot (you know, like most movies do).

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Spot on critique. I can't really add anything else. As a fan of Anderson's work I really wanted to love this. But you could tell after thirty minutesbest case scenariothis was just going to be a slog. It's one of those movies where you are too confused to really get the entire plot but you know it wouldn't make any difference. Boogie Nights was so sharp it is hard to believe these two films were made by the same guy.

The reason for the comparisons is because all three films are revisionist/"neo-" noir. Each of them is working on the tropes of the noir genre, shifting the time period and asking "what if?" in relation to the new setting and revised Hard Boiled detective. In the case of the movies you mentioned, for example, IV shares, in addition to a number of similar plot-twists, a time period with TLG and a stoner protagonist with TBL.

Dangerous territory, I think, remixing an already well-mined genre and doing so with a mumbly, off-hand treatment of all the major plot points. I'm not a Pynchon fan, so I can't speak to the adaptation, but I didn't see much new or exciting in the scenario. Perhaps Pynchon was working on Chandler in a way I didn't catch or that didn't translate into the script, which, of course, has its own slew of filmic sources to engage with.

What I did like, fwiw, is the way PTAs camera and editing matched Doc's point of view, from straight to hung over to stoned to gassed to up up up on that bottle of white. As an exercise in pov, I like the film quite a bit, but it would have helped if the POV felt a little less wrote, a little more fresh.

It's an adaptation of a BOOK. You're trying to compare it to other movies. "The Long Goodbye" is apropos because that was a Raymond Chandler BOOK relocated by Altman to this same era. Chandler also wrote "The Big Sleep", a seminal and very labyrinthine film noir. It does resemble "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", which was another BOOK set in this same era.

If this movie resembles "The Big Lebowski", it might me more a matter of the Coen brothers being a lot more well-read than their fans rather than Thomas Pynchon being a "Lebowsky-ite". But maybe he isI don't know.

"Let be be finale of seem/ The only emperor is the Emperor of Ice Cream"

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but was ultimately an interesting story and narrative, and fairly enjoyable.

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Was it? What movie were you watching? The most charismatic actors in the world couldn't make me give two shyts about the characters or what was happening in this movie. Utter garbage story.

Re Big Lobowski:
The Coen's can do this kind of offbeat comedy;PTA, as talented as he is, cannot.
Frakly, PTA has tried his hand with comedy twice and struck out each time.It's something he does not do all that well as a feature film. He can make a very funny sequence in a serious film, but has real problems with a feature length comedy.