Moviemaking, a lot of it, comes down to crossed fingers and the question posed by Gene Kelly in a throwaway line from Singin' in the Rain: "You think it'll get by?"
The Beach Bum is a fun-for-a-while attempt by writer-director Harmony Korine, American indie cinema's effrontery kingpin, to go a little bit mainstream. Matthew McConaughey is the reason it'll get by.
The Beach Bum
83 Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Snoop Dogg, Isla Fisher, Stefania Lavie Owen, Jimmy Buffett, Zac Efron, Martin Lawrence, Jonah Hill
Director: Harmony Korine
Rating: R, for pervasive drug and alcohol use, language throughout, nudity and some strong sexual content
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
If it gets by. For you. For me, it gets by for roughly half of its 95 minutes, thanks to McConaughey's stoned exuberance. The performance is a spinning top, wobbling to and fro, leaving PBR tallboy empties and cannabis haze in its wake.
Korine drenches the screen in bright splashes of color and dreamy, horny images of life down in the Florida Keys as lived by "the world's most prolific," most consistently stoned poet. The poet's name is Moondog. McConaughey gives this sunshine sprite the laugh of '70s-era Burt Reynolds and the appetites of an entire fraternity on spring break.
Moondog's wife, Minnie (Isla Fisher), is a merry heiress straight out of a '30s screwball comedy, moneyed and supernaturally tolerant. She lives a life separate from Moondog's; she's strictly Miami, and she's having an affair with a family friend, played by Snoop Dogg. (This movie's stash really must've been something.)
Moondog's 22-year-old daughter (Stefania LaVie Owen) is getting married. The wedding nags at the middle-age beach bum; does this mean he's getting old? From there, Korine engineers a major character's demise, not long after the movie arrives at its first moment of reckoning: Moondog learning first-hand of his wife's infidelity. McConaughey's reaction, one of confusion, hurt and boozy recognition, is exactly what The Beach Bum needs to stay afloat for a while.
Zac Efron pops up as Moondog's rehab comrade. The rehab does not take, and very quickly the party boy-men have busted out and mugged a Florida retiree for his golf cart (this scene is weirdly unexamined and sour). Later, Martin Lawrence snags a few laughs as the world's worst dolphin watch tour guide.
Korine shoots much of The Beach Bum as an overlapping series of music videos, using everything from the Peggy Lee hit "Is That All There Is?" by Leiber and Stoller to, inevitably, "Margaritaville" by Jimmy Buffett. The movie rides its own metaphoric golf cart in circles, its artful but repetitive editing deliberately blurring mornings and midnights so that Moondog's life becomes an extended blur. Before long, for such a happy man, Moondog becomes a pain. McConaughey exhausts his character's traits and mannerisms not long after Korine runs out of ideas.
It's three steps down, in other words, from Spring Breakers. That Korine film threw audiences into an entirely different, more sobering picture midway through, bracingly. Also that film had James Franco, triumphing with his portrayal of a more threatening species of Florida native plant. Take it or leave it: The Beach Bum is just out for Korine's idea of a good time. By the end, I could've used some shade, a cup of coffee and a round-trip ticket to Buffalo in February.
MovieStyle on 03/29/2019