"The Bums Lost": 'The Beach Bum' is Nonsense Presented as Genius

Harmony Korine has made an entire career out of filming people on the fringes of society. From the grimy and bizarre poverty-porn of Gummo to the neon-colored explosion of hedonism in Spring Breakers, he clearly loves wallowing in freaks, weirdos, and depravity. However, I've never found any point to his stories beyond some kind of ironic detachment and a complete disdain for anything beyond that. I find it tedious, but his new film The Beach Bum (his most mainstream yet) intrigued me because it seemed to be going for something beyond Korine's usual signatures. Instead, I found nothing but freaks, weirdos, depravity and an ironic detachment from any kind of point.

The film follows the life of Moondog (Matthew McConaughey, clearly having a blast), a poet living an aimless, hedonistic life in Key West who suddenly finds himself cut off from his fortune when his wife (Isla Fisher) dies in a car accident. Moondog must now finish his long-overdue novel to get back his wife's money, but first goes on a series of misadventures with the various colorful characters he encounters while traveling through the seedier sides of Florida.

The film is structured in Korine's typical stream-of-consciousness style, less a plot than a collection of episodes. This wears thin after a short while and McConaughey's character, at first charming, gets wearisome fast. The film almost unintentionally comes off as an indictment of Korine's entire career as we get pointless vignettes of people doing despicable things while various characters sing praises to the titular beach bum's "genius" which never seems to present itself to the audience. If Korine intended this as a joke, then it is not nearly clever enough to carry an entire film. — Forest Taylor

Written and directed by: Harmony Korine // Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Snoop Dogg, Isla Fisher, Stefania LaVie Owen, Zac Efron, Martin Lawrence, Jonah Hill and Jimmy Buffett // 95 minutes // Rated R