Perhaps, I will change my usual manner at the beginning of the review to state the outset of the plot. Because there was some backstory.
Somehow the trailer for this movie ran through Facebook. McConaughey as the new Lebowski is interesting, I thought, I’ll have to see.
Some time ago this film appeared on disks. I began to look at this case, and the further – the more sincere bewilderment grew in me. Because I didn’t understand point-blank what it was and why such bullshit was removed at all. But nevertheless, I hoped that the director was just showing us a fig in his pocket, and the picture would finally turn out somewhere. As a result, I watched it to the end. The opinion has not changed a single gram – some kind of absolutely complete cretinism, and even not funny even once. It’s like watching two cigarette butts sitting around and laughing really stupidly. They are funny, but you – that’s somehow never.
Well, I looked and looked, went to read the reviews: well, I think critics should properly embed this idiocy.
And the critics really hit, I quote.
There is no doubt that there is something divine in The Beach Bum – in any case, its author was definitely kissed by God. Just not Christ, but, for example, Dionysus.
There is a lot of harmless and absolutely trashy humor in The Beach Bum, a lot of drugs, a lot of alcohol. But most importantly, this is the vibe that Lunar Dog transmits, not only to all the characters around, but also to the viewer.
In The Beach Bum, the “human” is finally not overcome, but merges with the natural, is equated with the divine by birthright. The freedom of the Moon Dog is not a conceptual choice, but a property of nature, the golden freedom of the dawn of the emergence of mankind.
Harmony Korine’s screwball comedy is perhaps the simplest and most enjoyable film from a difficult director.
In the era of searching for new answers to unasked questions, escape from the inevitable end, Korine suddenly discovers the Way in her most passing film. This is hedonism – but without the challenge, shaking grabbing hands, vulgar consumerism.
It seems that this is a movie that seriously intends to oppose the anxiety that permeates the modern public and political world with a total and happy indifference to it.
I read it all and thought: maybe I just watched some wrong movie?
Let me recount what I saw in this film, for those who won’t watch it. And who is still going to watch – you here.
***
So. Some almost fifty-year-old dude nicknamed Moondog (Matthew McConaughey) lives on the island of Key West, Florida. All life on the island for the Moon Dog is evenly divided between drinking, smoking schmalt, sniffing cocaine, fucking with random girlfriends and parties where all kinds of pleasures are present at once.
The dog is kind. He once found a white kitten on the pier, and took him to him. The dog gives the kitten milk mixed with beer, and so that the kitten is not offended, he also drinks this infernal mixture.
Moon Dog – once in the past a famous poet who published several poetry collections, but even in an atmosphere of complete relaxation, he continues to write poems that please those around him. For example, his last masterpiece sounds like this (in translation, but there is no rhyme in the original either):
Last night, trying to sleep in my apartment
I kept thinking about you, I kept thinking about you.
And then at about four in the morning I went to take a pee – well, the way guys do.
I looked at my dick – and such joy came into my soul
From the thought that today he visited you twice.
Thanks to you, I have known beauty.
Such is the verse. The audience, of course, were delighted, because they touched Poetry.
At the same time, they show us that, even riding on some kind of boat with girls and other dumbass, the Moon Dog from time to time scribbles something on a typewriter – writes new poems.
The dog is a very cheerful person and loves jokes. For example, a man stands on the pier and plays the tuba. And the Dog will ka-a-a-ak push him in the back – the man will fly into the water with his fucking tuba, let him try to swim out now, abarzhaka!
At some point, Moon Dog gets a call from his wife, Minnie (Isla Fisher). Minnie is having a family friend, rapper Langerie (Snoop Dogg), who is sleeping with Minnie at this moment, but she asks Moon Dog to return to Miami because she loves him, and besides, their daughter Heather (Stephania Owen) is getting married for some shit.
The Moon Dog does not really want to return to civilization, but the daughter is sacred. So he gets into a motorboat and sails to Miami Beach – and cho, there are some miserable two hundred and seventy kilometers: ten hours of driving and five full gas stations, but there are gas stations in the sea, there must be!
Arriving at the precious wife, Moon Dog remembers that they are very rich (or rather, Minnie is very rich), and they have a good time: Moon Dog makes her cunnilingus at the moment when Minnie is painting her toenails – this is a high relationship, children .
Minnie is begging Dog not to be late for the wedding, but how can a cheerful person like Moondog not be late for his daughter’s wedding?! He again picked up some aunt in the next tavern and fucks her in the kitchen.
But the Dog nevertheless arrived at the wedding, without doing without a light joke: he brought some kind of granny in a wheelchair, dispersed the chair and the granny slammed into the wall – the Dog almost burst with laughter.
According to an old family tradition, the Dog felt the groom’s penis for its size, found nothing special there, but his father’s duty was fulfilled.
Heather is slightly offended by her father, but Minnie asks her daughter not to be offended by the Dog: that’s how he is, lives in his own dimension and needs to be loved for this.
At the wedding, Dog saw Minnie having mercy on Langerie, got a little upset, took a dip in the fountain and went aimlessly, but Minnie found him and had mercy on Dog too. Then they drove home, and the dog, as usual fucked up, sat behind the wheel and safely drove into the oncoming lane. Dog barely got a scratch, he’s such a lucky son of a bitch, and Minnie’s dead.
Well, she died and died, you need to share the inheritance. Moon Dog’s former literary agent Lewis (Jonah Hill), who is also Minnie’s executor, tells the poet that Minnie left half to her daughter and half to the Dog, but he can only receive the inheritance after he completes and publishes a new collection of poetry. Shit, Dog says, but there’s nowhere to go: Minnie, not without reason, believes that Dog will simply squander her family’s money.
The dog tries to get money from his daughter, then from Lewis, in order to blame Key West again, but they refuse.
Then the Dog recruits some homeless people, brings them to his own house, and they smash the situation to hell under his leadership.
At the trial, Dog is offered a choice: either compulsory treatment for a year, or to prison. The dog chooses treatment – and he made the right decision: everything in the clinic is also relaxed. But there is no good dope there, so Dog’s new friend Flicker (Zac Efron) persuades Dog to run away, although this is fraught with a concrete prison term for both of them.
They run away, get money along the way, hitting a disabled person in a wheelchair with a bottle and robbing him, and in every possible way are delayed, as before.
After some time, the Dog comes to his old friend Captain Wack (Martin Lawrence). He, on his rusty vessel, carries tourists to look at dolphins. Wack offers Dog a partnership, but during the first trip with tourists, Wack confuses dolphins with sharks, dives with them to play, as a result of which the shark chopped off the captain’s leg. Somehow they got him, the tourist children fished out the shin with a net, and the Hound, before sending Wack to the hospital, traded his shin for a captain’s cap – such a good friend he is.
After that, the Dog came to the rapper Langerie on a yacht, and they hung out there with booze, cocaine and whores. But the Dog is on the run, and Langerie comes up with the idea of dressing him in a woman’s dress so that the police won’t notice. But the police are going to raid Langerie’s house, so the rapper hands over all the stocks of grass to the Dog, puts him on a hydroplane, which is controlled by a blind pilot, who will still fly to the right place because of a stoner, and the Dog is returned to Key West, where with such a supply of drugs he will be the king of this world.
However, Moon Dog is a responsible person, and besides, he needs money. So he finishes writing a collection of poems, they publish it – and the Dog immediately receives a Pulitzer Prize for this crap. At the award ceremony, the Dog, who now wears a woman’s dress all the time – he liked this business – reads the same key poem about his penis, which has been twice. The audience is wildly excited.
The condition is met, the Dog gets a lot of money. With this money, he buys a yacht, loads the remaining forty-six million dollars there and returns to Key West. There he throws the coolest party with fireworks and during it he sets fire to the yacht with money with his own hands.
After the yacht has properly flared up, the Dog with the kitten changes into a boat and swims somewhere, claiming that he has not had such fun for a long time.
***
Well, how comedy? Cool, yes. If you don’t believe that everything was filmed there, take it and look – I didn’t invent anything.
In general, I got the impression that this Harmony Korin was first stoned to the end when he wrote the script, and then during the shooting the entire film crew was constantly in a completely stoned state. As I said, it’s all reminiscent when you look from the side at two cigarette butts who are constantly laughing, because they find it funny.
Here is the same thing. The actors and the director are in some kind of their own world of stoned freaks, pigging in full, and this makes them very funny.
And I looked at it with square eyes and thought: “God, did they really shoot such idiotic garbage?!”
But critics, as you saw above, appreciated the creation of this Harmony Korin. They classify him as a “provocative independent director” and they praise his previous masterpiece, Spring Breakers, which has a 5.0 rating on IMDB – this should have been achieved at all.
This masterpiece is still rated higher – 5.7. This is slightly below the plinth, but not yet underground. So some of the audience also liked it – well, you see, the golden freedom of the dawn of the emergence of mankind. They probably got stoned before watching just like the characters in the movie, so they were hooked.
As you can see, I didn’t get hooked. I did not appreciate the thin restless soul of Harmony Korin.
To be honest, Matthew McConaughey is a pity to look at. Well, yes, he portrays the dolt quite authentically, and most importantly, the whole film giggles very stupidly. I don’t know what shooting in such a picture gave him at all, but these are his problems.
To the acting talents of Martin Lawrence, I have, frankly, no reverence at all, and then he also got this Captain Wack, all the scenes with which clearly fit into the paradigm of complete idiocy that came out from the pen of a stoned screenwriter.
But on the other hand, a movie about high poetry, this cannot be taken away from him, amen!
The Beach Bum movie meaning
Director: Harmony Korine Cast: Martin Lawrence, Isla Fisher, Matthew McConaughey, Jonah Hill, Zac Efron, Snoop Dogg, Stephanie Owen, Jimmy Buffett, Donovan St. Wee Williams, David Bennett
US gross: $3.5 million
Comedy, USA-UK, 2019, 95 min.