The Beach Bum

2019 Harmony Korine movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: A slacker poet has a series of misadventures in the southern parts of Florida around the time his daughter gets married.

The love/hate relationship--more like a like/eye-roll relationship, to be honest--with giggling avant-manchild Harmony Korine continues with this, something like a mash-up of Trash Humpers and Spring Breakers. It's glossy, it's got some star power, and it shares Spring Breakers' cinematographer, Benoit Debie. At the same time, it drifts as aimlessly as Trash Humpers and shares its juvenile humor. It's predictable in its spontaneity, a movie that's got a single note and plays it over and over like a child with one of those toy xylophones banging the red one over and over again because it's his favorite color. The film's virtually plotless, but it doesn't really do much to create a well-rounded central character either. By the time a "point" to the whole thing emerges, you realize that it's what you figured it would be when you walked it to the theater and that it's really shallow and silly. Harmony Korine, it seems, hasn't evolved intellectually since his senior year in high school.

McConaughey seems like he's having more fun than I did. The performance is better than the movie it tries to carry, and it's hard to imagine anybody else doing what McConaughey is doing here. Snoop Dogg and Jimmy Buffett also make an appearance, and I have doubts that the former even realized he was in a movie. My favorite character Moondog runs into might be Martin Lawrence's Captain Wack unless it's Phil and the gang of homeless.

I've lost faith in Harmony Korine again. Fool me once, Korine, same on you. Fool me all the other times--also shame on you. Do something better than this with your oddball creative energy. This is as silly as those really bad parody movies.