Reviews for this film from our members:
- Marco Albanese @ Stanze di Cinema [Italian]
- Excerpt: Paul Thomas Anderson chiude idealmente la sua trilogia sul mito del progresso americano e sulla perdita dell’innocenza, cominciata con Il petroliere e proseguita con The Master.
- José Arce @ LaButaca.net [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Nuevo trabajo colosal de Paul Thomas Anderson, que propone un mastodonte de dos horas y media totalmente hipnótico, denso, hilarante, genial. Su ritmo y desarrollo no es para todos, claro, pero quien lo disfrute lo hará de verdad. Obligada.
- Danny Baldwin @ Critic Speak
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Inherent Vice may be massive and ponderous and undoubtedly an “art film,” but it’s also likely to ignite an obsessive cult of multiple viewings similar to that of Lebowski. By equally satisfying intellectuals and eager aesthetes, it has already secured its place in the culture, not to mention a spot on the list of movies that will inspire the next generation of film school students.
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A jaunty screen adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s comic 2009 novel about the demise of the hippie era of free love and pot-happy endings.
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: “Inherent Vice” is for the die-hard P.T. Anderson fan, the kind of fan that studies every frame of his film and will drive six hours to see him present the film on 70mm in person.
- Bill Clark @ From The Balcony
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: It’s enjoyable, a “Chinatown” of its period, but it lacks the transportive psychedelia I expected, playing, and even more oddly often looking, rather flat.
- Carlos del Río @ El rincón de Carlos del Río [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Puro vicio estaría muy bien si no fuera tan larga, y si no fuera tan confusa.
- Jim Dixon @ Examiner.com
- Excerpt: The idea of a barefoot gumshoe is sort of intrinsically nauseating (although what a good title it would have been), but the main character in “Inherent Vice” is stoned most of the time, so maybe he doesn’t actually care. Based on the bestseller by Thomas Pynchon, this genre-bender from “Boogie Nights” director Paul Thomas Anderson takes the film noir private eye story and projects it through a haze of cannabis-fueled sixties’ pop culture references so thick you’re likely to get a contact high.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: Inherent Vice is a major stumble from a major filmmaker.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Hollow and pointless. .a better title would have been ‘Incoherent Vice’,
- Roderick Heath @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Inherent Vice neglects Anderson’s theme of master-pupil relationships, perhaps because The Master signalled a natural end to them, all the better to concentrate on his twinned rivals and doppelgangers, another constant refrain in his work. Equally, Inherent Vice’s official status as comedy, however uneasy, suddenly gives new dimension to the farcical impulses throughout his films.
- Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Inherent Vice is an aimless trudge through the fog of a marijuana haze.
- Blake Howard @ Graffiti With Punctuation
- Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Inherent Vice has its fair share of critics who shake their heads in bewilderment and consider the entire venture over-rated. Not so. I say embrace the weird, marvel at the gall, and get your kicks where you can brother man.
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Word on the street is that Paul Thomas Anderson’s deliberately hazy and cockeyed but undeniably frustrating “Inherent Vice” gets better with multiple viewings. Unless the screenplay miraculously changes the second time around, once was enough.
- Oktay Kozak @ Oregon Herald
- Donald Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Mathieu Li-Goyette @ Panorama-cinéma [French]
- Alan Mattli @ Facing the Bitter Truth [German]
- Excerpt: Paul Thomas Anderson is saved from himself by cult author Thomas Pynchon. After the irritably pretentious ‘There Will Be Blood’ and ‘The Master’, his adaptation of Pynchon’s ‘Inherent Vice’ proves to be an atmospheric, pleasurably undogmatic neo noir in the vein of Altman’s ‘The Long Goodbye’.
- Matthew McKernan @ FilmWhinge
- Excerpt: There have also been many who find the film’s world dense and fascinating and exciting and its tone moving but, and I need to be personal here, I don’t agree.
- Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: By turns wondrous and frustrating, engaging and distant, “Inherent Vice” isn’t a journey everyone is going to want to take, but it is one hell of a trip, even if you’re not always certain why you’re on it.
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Anderson’s Inherent Vice, however, is like a Jenga game of adaptation. Pull one block from the bottom and put it on the top, and the film wobbles with zanily gutsy architecture and, despite itself, it actually works.
- Jamie S. Rich @ DVDTalk
- Excerpt: Anderson’s strength is in managing to be both hyper-real and surreal at the same time…Which you could say is the real satirical genius of Inherent Vice.
- Francis Rizzo III @ DVDTalk
- Excerpt: A long, strange trip
- Tom Santilli @ Examiner.com
- Excerpt: It’s not that a square can’t relate to the hippy-trippy atmosphere that Paul Thomas Anderson creates, it’s just that it isn’t all that interesting.
- Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Rides that fine line between rationality and irrationality, heading towards a hazy neverland where universal paranoia holds sway. Not only does it ride that line, it eventually snorts it up.
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: “Inherent Vice” is a tweet-tweet-arf-arf movie for stoners.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: A loopy fever-dream of a movie that recasts the conventions of noir in a blissed-out psychedelic haze.
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
- Ron Wilkinson @ Monsters and Critics
- Excerpt: Ignore the stoner humor and hackneyed clichés and appreciate the mood and setting of this most neo of the neo-noirs.
- Andrew Wyatt @ St. Louis Magazine
- Excerpt: What will bring viewers back to Inherent Vice again and again is the perfection of its execution and the novelty of its mellowed-out perspective on a world gone mad.
