Movie Review: The Beach Bum

The Beach Bum *** / *****

Directed by: Harmony Korine.

Written by: Harmony Korine.

Starring: Matthew McConaughey (Moondog), Snoop Dogg (Lingerie), Isla Fisher (Minnie), Stefania LaVie Owen (Heather), Martin Lawrence (Captain Wack), Zac Efron (Flicker), Jonah Hill (Lewis), Donovan St V. Williams (Snoop's Rasta Pilot), Jimmy Buffett (Jimmy Buffett).

 

It is somewhat strange to me that Harmony Korine – who predicted Trump’s America with 2012’s Spring Breakers, would make The Beach Bum as he long awaited follow-up. While the two films have a similar neon look to them, their outlooks couldn’t be more different – in Spring Breakers, the apocalypse is coming, and in The Beach Bum, everything is alright – or at least it could be if you just ignore the world, and focus on sucking the nectar out of every last moment in your life. The Beach Bum is a feel good film then for 2019 – a film that may acknowledge that the world is going to hell, but if that’s the case and you cannot stop, then keep dancing.

 

The film stars Matthew McConaughey is what has to be the apex of his Matthew McConaughey persona. He plays Moondog, a sometimes poet who lives in the Florida Keys, on his boat, and spends his days getting high, drinking, and fucking anything that moves. The plot, as it were, kicks off when he has to return to his wife Minnie (Isla Fisher) and her mansion for their daughter’s wedding. Minnie has no delusions over who her husband is – and doesn’t much care. She’s sleeping with Lingerie (Snoop Dogg) when Moondog isn’t around anyway – but when Moondog and Minnie are together, as unlikely a duo as they appear, they are good together – sexually, and just about every other way as well. Their daughter, Heather (Stefania) sums up Moondog thusly – “He may be an asshole, but he’s also a great man”. Few watching the movie will disagree with the first part – and how much you can get behind the second part will likely determine how much you like the movie.

 

The movie, appropriately enough, drifts from scene to scene, with Moondog always finding a new friend, a new companion, and always seeming to come out on top. The wedding becomes a drunken blur, bleeding into a romantic interlude with Minnie – a beautiful montage set to “Is that All There is?”. From there, you think the movie is going to take a darker turn – but it never quite arrives. There are further adventures – with Captain Wack (Martin Lawrence perhaps giving the best performance of his career in a cameo) as a sea captain who takes people swimming with what he thinks are dolphins. Or Zac Efron as Flicker, a vape smoking psycho Moondog meets in a brief stay in rehab. Whatever the hell Efron is doing here, he’s doing it at full tilt. Or Jonah Hill who shows up occasionally with the worst New Orleans accent I’ve ever heard someone attempt (I assume deliberately, but who knows). And there’s always Snoop Dogg’s Lingerie, who occasionally, Moondog will just run into and have a long party with – either with or without Jimmy Buffet.

 

So yes, the movie is aimless – deliberately so. There is nothing really to grasp onto in this film except for McConaughey’s performance – which is actually quite good here, even if it is rather one note. You cannot bring Moondog down – he’s just going to keep going and going and going having fun as the world burns. The performance has a goofy charm to it that I found impossible to resist – and as such, I found the movie impossible to resist as well. When it’s all over, I’m not quite sure what the point of it all was – but then again, like with everything Korine has ever made, I think he ended up making precisely the film he wanted to make here, so the point may well be that there is no point, so fuck it, let’s just drink, smoke and fuck our lives away like Moondog.