We may have skipped out on the trailer, but that doesn’t mean we’re not curious what people think of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice,” which had its first screening for rain-sodden press in New York this morning. Most reviews are embargoed until tonight, but here’s what critics had to say on Twitter about the movie — and the line.
Robbie Collin, Telegraph
Anderson has named the gag-a-minute Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker comedies, such as Airplane! and The Naked Gun, as models for Inherent Vice’s comic rhythm, but while the jokes tumble past at a similar rate – a drug-fuelled car chase sequence involving Martin Short’s unhinged dentist is yelp-out-loud funny – the result isn’t entertainment so much as blissed-out bamboozlement. Underneath the crackpot humor, there’s something else at work; a deep-seated ache of nostalgia for a time when films were allowed to look, sound and move like this, that will surely come into sharper focus on a second viewing, when you aren’t so preoccupied with wolfing down the spaghetti tangle of the plot. What’s clear from a bleary initial encounter, though, is that the film is stupendous: as antic as “Boogie Nights” and “Punch-Drunk Love,” but with “The Master” and “There Will Be Blood’s” uncanny feel for the swell and ebb of history.
Stephen Holden, New York Times:
The movie creates a surreal vision of a bygone Southern California dense with smog and reeking of marijuana, when every street seemed to have its own massage parlor. The atmosphere is so steeped in vintage psychedelia that it is impossible to distinguish reality from fantasy; it could all be a dream. The best approach to “Inherent Vice” is not to look for profundity but to lie back, inhale imaginary clouds of secondhand pot smoke, and go with the flow of a yarn so amusingly convoluted it makes “The Big Sleep” feel like children’s bedtime reading.
And on Twitter:
INHERENT VICE: pta’s “The Long Good High” is a sweet & strung-out noir odyssey of loneliness in a capitalist nightmare. low-key nirvana.
— david ehrlich (@davidehrlich) October 4, 2014
So we’re never not going to get a self-indulgent Paul Thomas Anderson film, then. That’s fine. This was better than the last two.
— Joe Reid (@joereid) October 4, 2014
Dibs on THE BIG LE-VICE-SKI, though.
— Joe Reid (@joereid) October 4, 2014
As confusing as INHERENT VICE is, it hits that perfect sweet spot that lies between LEBOWSKI and THE LONG GOODBYE. #ThatMeansILovedIt
— Tony Dayoub (@TonyDayoub) October 4, 2014
Inherent Vice: Anderson awkwardly, aloofly ambles across an arid abyss. Amazing ambience! An achievement, absolutely.
— Aaahh!!!ndreas (@astoehr) October 4, 2014
Inherent Vice: Anderson awkwardly, aloofly ambles across an arid abyss. Amazing ambience! An achievement, absolutely.
— Aaahh!!!ndreas (@astoehr) October 4, 2014
INHERENT VICE is a work of genius and I’m not sure I care about it much or anything much man I’m so stoned
— Robert Greene (@prewarcinema) October 4, 2014
IV is like the trailer but so much longer and slower.
— Chris Boeckmann (@tapestore) October 4, 2014
It’s fun to watch Joaquin Phoenix stumble from situation to situation in INHERENT VICE. It is a little like TOP SECRET!
— Mike Ryan (@mikeryan) October 4, 2014
Inherent Vice: PTA pulls off Pynchon. A warm, hazy, funny, sprawling, one-of-a-kind work. #NYFF
— Jordan Raup (@jpraup) October 4, 2014
Oh wait I can tweet about it. Inherent Vice is nuts and sorry I laughed so loud and frequently folks.
— Matt Prigge (@mattprigge) October 4, 2014
Inherent Vice is very committed California stoner noir. It will yield some interesting critical writing. This tweet is not an example of it.
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) October 4, 2014
INHERENT VICE PRESS SCREENING LINE (’14): way overlong, full of banal dialogue, in series need of editing. Def doesn’t pass the Bechdel test
— C. Mason Wells (@cmasonwells) October 4, 2014
The long, long line for Inherent Vice. But I’m standing next to Thomas Pynchon, so it’s all good.
— Joshua Rothkopf (@joshrothkopf) October 4, 2014
There was a giant line for the men’s bathroom and no one in the women’s. #inherentvice
— Alison Willmore (@alisonwillmore) October 4, 2014
Paul Thomas Anderson is really going to struggle to top this bacon egg and cheese I’m eating in line for his movie
— David Sims (@davidlsims) October 4, 2014
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