Tag Archives: Matthew McConaughey

The Beach Bum (2019): Hippie Wonderland

Returning to a drug and alcohol fueled Florida, Harmony Korine (Spring Breakers) teams up with Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club) for a tour through burnout country. McConaughey plays Moondog, an acclaimed poet and stoner that drifts through the Florida Keys enjoying every moment he can. His wife Minnie (Isla Fisher; Nocturnal Animals) lives separately in a mansion and spends time with their mutual friend Lingerie (Snoop Dogg), a rapper. There is even less of a plot here than in Spring Breakers. Moondog doesn’t have a clear motivation beyond enjoying himself. He scrounges for money as he moves from party to party without a care in his mind. He’s an easygoing, worry-free hippie.

Somehow, things just work out for him. He doesn’t have a rigorous writing schedule, but the words come out as needed. He doesn’t usually have a lot of money on him, but he makes friends and ends up with whatever he needs, be it drugs, women, or accommodations.

McConaughey sells all of this with his breezy attitude. It’s like his character from Dazed and Confused spent the next 20 years doing drugs with free-spirited hippies and adopted the lifestyle. As his wife states, “Moondog is from another dimension”. His mindset is one of a kind and completely detached from anything resembling reality. Some may have little patience for a character whose actions can be considered irresponsible, but McConaughey’s performance makes Moondog seem more like a harmless loafer than someone who needs to grow up. The one inconsistency is that the characters keep describing him as a world-renowned, award-winning poet which is hard to reconcile with his lifestyle. The few times he recites poetry are mostly him repeating the same short, asinine verse that is apparently applause worthy.

McConaughey and Snoop Dogg make a surprisingly good duo.

The film, like its main character, lacks a clear direction. The narrative is more of a series of encounters that appear to be sequential, but don’t actually need to be. Korine doesn’t seem interested in telling a cohesive story. He loves the character he has created in Moondog and wants to follow him through a world of nonstop pleasure. Together with cinematographer Benoît Debie, he shoots his film with two visual palettes: sun-drenched outdoors and neon pinks and yellow-greens similar to their work in Spring Breakers. The visuals give the film the feel of an endless summer vacation. One without purpose or consequence.

Yet, any issues are of little importance. It’s hard to stay mad at someone who shows nothing but childish joy. At one point, Moondog finds out that Lingerie has been having an affair with his wife for years while he was away from home, but he barely reacts. He shrugs it off as another part of an unknowable, uncontrollable world that is never worth taking too seriously. This notion permeates the film and makes it difficult to be bothered by any of its flaws. At its best, The Beach Bum is a silly celebration of ignoring everyday struggles and enjoying yourself in every moment, but even at its worst it’s a harmless, carefree, and meandering trip through a hippie wonderland.

3/5 stars.

Serenity (2019): Baffling and Bizarre

Somewhere in the middle of the sea, Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey; Dallas Buyers Club) makes a meager living taking tourists out to fish tuna and sharks on his ramshackle boat. He lives an uneventful life save for a particular mammoth fish he has been chasing. One day his ex-wife Karen (Anne Hathaway; Les Misérables) abruptly arrives on the island and makes him an offer. She promises ten million dollars if he will take her current husband onto his boat and kill him. Her husband Miller (Jason Clarke; Zero Dark Thirty) has powerful ties, shady dealings, and has been physically abusing her. She sees this as her only way out and begs Dill to do this for their son who has now become a shut-in, spending his life behind his computer screen to avoid his abusive step-father. With a juicy premise written and directed by Steven Knight (Locke), Serenity initially seemed like a film to watch out for.

On the surface, Knight wants this to be a neo-noir. Every required trope of the film noir is present. Dill is a loner dedicated to his job, deliberately living in isolation, and Karen enters the film with the bleached blonde hair, barely opaque dress, and drawn out delivery of the classic femme fatale. The visuals are sun-soaked with raised contrast to emphasize the heightened reality of the story. While the script is intending to play with the established norms of the genre, it falls too snugly into the mold with characters lacking anything to distinguish themselves from a general archetype. Clarke’s villainous Miller is one-dimensional in his immediate and unmitigated loathsomeness and Hathaway’s Karen is little more than a plot device to force Dill out of his routine existence.

Despite the cast’s efforts, none of the characters are memorable.

Without spoiling anything, the film introduces a game-changing element midway through. This piece of info radically reframes the narrative and not to its benefit. It is a reveal that, while hinted at in the film’s narrative and stylistic choices, is ridiculous and renders much of the story pointless. Furthermore, it raises a myriad of questions about everything shown so far and the plausibility of every character’s actions. What should be a plot explanation becomes a source of numerous plot holes and immersion-breaking inconsistencies.

By the time the credits roll, we’re left in a state of disbelief and confusion. This isn’t a multilayered, reflexive narrative like Mulholland Drive, rather it’s an ill-conceived, poorly-executed idea that raises questions about film’s entire development process. Did no one raise any red flags after reading the script? Was the cast attached alone enough to override the glaring narrative flaws? This can’t have read well on paper so it boggles the mind that two Academy award winning actors and a talented writer-director would involve themselves in a project like this, particularly since this is an original idea. The combination of high powered talent both in front of and behind the camera along with a blatantly problematic narrative make Serenity one of the most baffling and bizarre releases in recent years.

2/5 stars.

Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)

Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! can be seen as a spiritual successor to Dazed and Confused or even a continuation of Boyhood. Like Dazed and Confused, the film is about someone starting school, only this time it’s a college freshman in the 1980’s rather than a high school freshman in the 70’s. Jake (Blake Jenner) plays the main character moving into the off-campus house exclusively for members of the baseball team and the movie shows the events that take place during the 3 days before school begins. Like most of Linklater’s films, there is no clear plot. Instead, the camera moves along with the characters as they go about their lives.

Linklater is known for producing naturalist performances. Each character feels believable but unfortunately not often likable. The director’s favorite archetype has always been the outsider artist who spends his time philosophizing about their true purpose in life, but most of the characters here don’t fit into that mold. All of the leads are Jake’s baseball teammates and their hyper-competitive nature turns their home into a fraternity house of concentrated testosterone. Many of the actors appear conspicuously old and there is even a Matthew Mcconaughey look-alike spouting lines similar to his famous role in Dazed and Confused. Actually, almost all of Jake’s teammates are mostly repulsive versions of that character. Predatory, egotistical, and creepy. The characters, though well realized, are shallow and their dialogue quickly devolves into what some may call “guy talk”. By that i mean each conversation is either about one-upping each other or objectifying women. The rest of their time is spent playing juvenile pranks on each other that, while occasionally funny, do nothing to grow the characters.

Lots of great songs come out of this convertible.

The period is well realized. It’s clear that Linklater knows this era (he was about the age of the characters during this time) and has lovingly reproduced it. The call-outs to Space Invaders, pinball, and vinyl records are appreciated but overabundant. The camera unnecessarily lingers too often on the titles of games, TV, or movies, overeager to mine nostalgia. The music is used similarly. Linklater has a great ear and assembled a soundtrack out of the best of the 80’s featuring The Knack, Blondie, and a particularly hilarious moment when the characters sing along to Rapper’s Delight by the Sugarhill Gang. The only downside is that when the music – and the energy it brings – are missing, the scenes are are noticeably lacking. Its absence exposes a lack of compelling characters.

Despite these flaws it’s hard to fault the technical aspects of the film. The story, while aimless, is well paced and is never boring. When Linklater does finally choose to add depth to Blake’s teammates, they quickly show potentially redeeming qualities. It’s a shame that these instances are rare amidst their standard superficial pursuits. Linklater has never been a filmmaker to manipulate his characters. His camera observes rather than judges and in this way he has achieved his goal. He’s accurately and affectionately portrayed the characters that he was interested in. Unfortunately, to the rest of us these characters are more often grating than appealing and Linklater’s craft can’t overcome that hurdle.

3/5 stars.