Popcorn Column by Michael S. Goldberger

Warner Bros.  Joaquin Phoenix's private eye Doc Sportello is on a quest to find a former love and her missing boyfriend in the drug-fueled haze of 1970s L.A. Reese Witherspoon joins her 'Walk the Line' co-star as a deputy DA.

I don't believe it myself. It happened in the late '60s while visiting my rock 'n' roll friend Howard "Richard" Tepp, lead singer of Richard and the Young Lions, in Topanga Canyon. We had a dinner of organic rice, sprouts and hip philosophy at the home of a popular astrologer, who opined how three musicians she knew might have the right karma, or was it chakra? She would arrange a meeting. What did Richard think? He thought it was cool. I thought nothing of it, until years later when I realized she spoke of Crosby, Stills and Nash. Young would follow.

Such is my feeble attempt to prove I have the credentials to review Paul Thomas Anderson's "Inherent Vice," adapted from Thomas Pynchon's novel about the L.A. hippie/drug culture, love, deceit, politics and business as usual in spite of the so-called social upheaval, circa 1970.

out of 4

It is gauzy stuff, a genre progeny of "Chinatown" (1974) that follows the investigative efforts of Larry "Doc" Sportello, a private eye for the times played in existential, semi-hallucinatory mode by Joaquin Phoenix. Curiously running his practice out of a doctor's office, he is always stoned.

Trying to follow the convoluted doings, chock full of one undefined reference after the next, we wonder if we've been slipped a Mickey that has transported us to this resignedly confusing place. Making the abstract conversations even more difficult to understand is the annoying abundance of slurred enunciation, with Phoenix as the chief offender. However, like a Macadamia that's particularly challenging to open, when we do get to the meat of the matter there is momentary satisfaction. Then it's on to the next, even harder nut to crack.

But if there is true moviegoing pleasure here, albeit not in the usual sense of the term, it is in the satiric commentary that is an integral part of director Anderson's re-creation of mood and atmosphere. Both a paean to, and derision of, the era in question, by placing Doc Sportello into this tarnished and seedy wonderland he becomes its Alice, searching for truth as rare as the Golden Fleece. I mean, it's almost 40 minutes until we're sure he's really a private eye.

While easy enough to say now, once you've stripped the ambiguity and intentional sidetracking from the scenario and finally figured out who's who among the rogues' gallery, the case at hand represents no greater a mystery than can be seen any given night on those TV cop shows. But then again, there is Anderson's alluring artistry, a stylistic, out-on-a-limb adventurousness more often seen in foreign film. It contends composition and message are more important than plot. It is therefore a bit liberating in its fantasy that mainstream appeal and profit are of little concern.

Matters get rolling when ex-heartthrob Shasta Fay Hepworth, played by Katherine Waterston, visits Doc and tells him how the coterie surrounding her latest lover, a real estate bigwig, wants to involve her in an extortion scheme. He'll try to figure something out, but before he can, she goes missing. What's more, said developer of eyesore housing is also nowhere to be found. Thus it only follows, owing to a catalog of sudden convolutions, that Doc is in on the deal.

The accusation is just par for the course as far as Lt. Detective Christian F. "Bigfoot" Bjornsen, portrayed with paranoid, rightwing vehemence by Josh Brolin, is concerned. It's become his habit to kick down Doc's door every couple weeks, even if just to call him hippie scum. The adversarial relationship, apparently more role-defining to Bigfoot than Doc, is metaphorically akin to the cliché of opposing warriors finding themselves in the same foxhole.

Now, as was classically proven by "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), no gumshoe gambit is complete without its shamus being knocked unconscious at least once. Here it happens when Doc follows a lead that takes him to a house of ill repute fronting for a much more dishonest bit of business. Naturally he wakes up next to a dead body, and yep, he's the suspect. That's about as normal as the zigzagging, drug-fueled storyline gets. Add his acquaintanceship with Owen Wilson's Coy Harlingen, a saxophonist/double agent (uh-huh), and we're off to gosh knows where.

The story tapestry is dizzying, baffling and frustrating, exacerbated by a perpetually smoke-filled atmosphere that I feared, at some junctures, might impart a contact high (I think I did get the munchies). Yet despite its pretensions and outlandish disregard for our mental well-being, strewn through the historical murk and smog there are pearls of poetic verity, mixed with an acerbic meditation on the wiles of love. So if you're patient, a bit jaded and just begging to have your sensibilities toyed with, you can't go wrong with "Inherent Vice."

 "Inherent Vice," rated R, is a Warner Bros. release directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and stars Joaquin Phoenix, Katherine Waterston and Josh Brolin. Running time: 148 minutes

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