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THE BEACH BUM
Director: Harmony Korine Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Snoop Dogg, Isla Fisher, Stefania LeVie Owen, Jonah Hill, Martin Lawrence, Zac Efron, Donovan St V. Williams, Clinton Archambault MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:35 Release Date: 3/29/19 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 29, 2019 The protagonist of The Beach Bum is a fictional character, but if the movie had ended with some suggestion that he was based on a real person, I'd believe it. I might also believe any trivia about what happened to the real-life version of this character after the movie's story has finished. He could be hanging out anywhere in the United States or in some foreign location, where he somehow ended up after taking a wrong turn in his dinghy. If the movie had stated that, after becoming bored of his adventures in this dimension, Moondog (Matthew McConaughey) had returned to the dimension from whence he came, I'd be prone to believe that, too. The point is that Moondog is a pleasant rarity: a character who seems as if he could be completely real, save for the mere fact of his very existence. The character is so strange and contradictory and somehow beyond the everyday concerns of normal people that he has to be a creation. He is also embodies those qualities and others so much that one wonders if writer/director Harmony Korine actually met this man in the real world. Somewhere, either in Key West or parts hitherto unknown, there might be a real Moondog, who is living his life without a thing to his name. If he were to hear from someone that they went and made a movie about him, he'd say that it's pretty neat and simply go wandering as if nothing has changed. Moondog is absolutely the sort of character who deserves a movie of some kind, and at times, Korine's movie is the sort of story that should star Moondog. There's no plot, although a lot happens to and around the protagonist, who rarely seems affected by the various goings-on. When he discovers that his wife is having an affair with his best friend, Moondog offers the closest we see to an emotional reaction. That reaction, though, quickly turns from one of betrayal to utter confusion, and there's something to the prolonged, confounded look on his face that makes us think Moondog is thinking ahead. He's not trying to decide what to do about this information in regards to his relationships with his wife and his best friend. It's as if he knows this will make a great story or poem someday, and he's just trying to figure out what kind of story or poem that should be. Moondog is a poet, and at one point in his life, he was a fairly successful and influential one, too. It's the reason his wealthy wife Minnie (Isla Fisher) has stayed with him for as long as she has, despite the fact that he spends most of his time in Key West, while their lavish mansion sits on the coast in Miami. In that other city, he ambles along after drinking a lot of beer and/or smoking a lot of weed. He has sex with other women when it's convenient, although he seems just as content in caring for a stray kitten that he discovers on a dock. Minnie wants him to finish the novel he had promised the world so long ago, and so does his agent Lewis (Jonah Hill), who thinks he's Moondog's friend, only to be constantly reminded that Moondog doesn't do traditional friendships. He likes spending time with Lingerie (Snoop Dogg), because his pal has marijuana flown in from Jamaica and, surely, a desire for adventure that approaches Moondog's own. What can be said of Moondog's story, without coming across as if this review is relaying a dream instead of the actual events of a movie, is that it's a series of adventures. Moondog ends up on his own after the drunken night of the wedding of his daughter Heather (Stefania LaVie Owen)—to a man (played by Joshua Ritter) whose name Moondog only bothers to learn after the guy becomes his son-in-law. He's left with nothing, since everyone who knows him thinks being broke and homeless might give him the push he needs to finish his long-promised book. The adventures include an escape from a rehab facility with Flicker (Zac Efron), the son of a preacher man who does whatever he wants because he figures Jesus has him covered, and a dolphin-sighting trip with his old pal Captain Wack (Martin Lawrence), who's a bit too eager to jump in the water at the sight of a dorsal fin. All of these episodes are rambling, as you'd expect from a guy like Moondog, and a couple of them are funny. McConaughey's performance is easier to quantify (It's great) than it is to qualify. He inhabits this character so adeptly and naturally that to speak specifically of the performance is to try to figure out what makes Moondog tick. That's an intimidating notion. The Beach Bum knows that one can only come close to defining Moondog by way of his adventures. We kind of resent him and kind of admire him, but he is almost too unique an invention to pigeonholed into any kind of narrative—even one as freewheeling as this one. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for pervasive drug and alcohol use, language throughout, nudity and
some strong sexual content)
