Inherent Vice premiered at the New York Film Festival this weekend, and now the first reviews for the film have been posted across the web. Thus far, reviews are relatively positive, though some critics are a little lukewarm — and others even downright negative — on Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film.
The most common thread among the reviews: the plot, ultimately, doesn’t matter, for better or for worse. Sean Hutchinson (Film School Rejects) explains that although the film is filled with jokes and funny situations, “The intentionally convoluted plot may lose viewers who elect to give up on the film rather than engage with the hardboiled hilarity.” Additionally, the majority of reviews have praised the film’s impressive ensemble cast, the standout being newcomer Katherine Waterston, whom Indiewire’s Eric Kohn acknowledged as “the movie’s real discovery.”
On the positive end of the scale, Matt Patches (IGN) called Inherent Vice, “Provocative, hilarious, and its own breed of weird.” Also firmly in the film’s corner is HitFix’s Drew McWeeny, who praised the film as “so funny, so strange, so wonderfully charmingly deranged,” and noted, “The way the film plays with memory and with chronology is fascinating.”
But many also acknowledged that Inherent Vice isn’t for everyone, even if they liked it. In his review for Little White Lies, David Ehrlich wrote, “Inherent Vice is probably too dippy and straight up strange to be remembered as Anderson’s masterpiece, but – in its own laid back way – it might be the most undeniable display of his talent.” And for The Playlist, Rodrigo Perez concluded Inherent Vice “will surely divide,” and also that Anderson’s latest is “arguably for hardcore cineastes only.”
Others came away less than impressed. For The Wrap, Dan Callahan notes the film contains a slew of references and Easter eggs, but adds “films are more than their references and visual coups.” He goes on, “They are also, generally, about people and times and places, and there are no believable people or characters in this movie. They’re just cartoons — half-baked, not-particularly-funny cartoons, alas.”
Echoing Callahan’s sentiments is Edward Douglas for Coming Soon, who emerged this weekend with arguably the most negative review for the film. Douglas called the film “gruelingly dull” due to its lack of coherent storytelling. “Imagine The Big Lebowski if it wasn’t even remotely funny or entertaining and that’s what you have left.”
Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson was down on the film as well, calling it “a little too zonked, meandering and overly long, an ultimately pointless story told by a stoned person.” And as for Todd McCarthy at The Hollywood Reporter, he proclaimed, “Inherent Vice is intermittently successful but only up to a point.”
So who ought we believe? I guess we’ll have a chance to make up our own minds when Inherent Vice starts hitting theaters December 12, with a wide release slated for January 9, 2015.
