The Beach Bum

Spoilers!

Moondog is very much like his creator, writer/director Harmony Korine.  Perhaps moreso than the actor who plays him.  Here is a film in which a dyed in the wool hedonist floats through life seeking only pleasure: the next buzz or high, numb comfort, a great fuck.  Korine may share these goals, but my particular point is how Creator and creation share a certain ability to play the enfant terrible and nonetheless be celebrated for it.  Moondog is a stoner perhaps never seen sober in this year's THE BEACH BUM, even in the face of tragedy.  He neglects his family and repeatedly breaks the law, suffering some temporary reprimand but ultimately getting away with it.  Is that a spoiler?

Matthew McConaughey was most certainly the right choice for this role.  Not only because he was once arrested for disturbing his neighbors by playing bongo drums in the nude or those odd car commercials.  The kinship he must have felt for Moondog probably can't be understood fully unless you're like that, man.  One who just can't do all the responsible things in life.  "If it feels good, do it"?  Hell yeah, brah.  Like that random woman at the diner? You'll want to bang her right in the kitchen.  Even if it will make you late for your daughter's wedding. Moondog possesses a freedom so many dream of and covet.  But surely there is consequence?

THE BEACH BUM is not the sort of film that presents a party and then the fallout, to let us know the filmmakers don't really condone the lifestyle depicted.  Some may disagree.  THE WOLF OF WALL STREET was not a celebration of bad behavior.  It's much harder to make that argument here.  Perhaps refreshingly, Korine never contrives the expected follow up scenes to selfish pursuit.  Moondog, a once celebrated poet, Just Keeps Livin'.  He's cut off from his wife Minnie's (Isla Fisher) fortune after she dies in an auto accident.  This was after a night of revelry with her hubby, who walks away with nary a scratch.

Monndog eventually will gleefully sleep under bridges and make friends with vagrants.  He doesn't seem to be saddened by Minnie's passing, even as he watches her die.  If you'd confront him, surely he'd tell you she wouldn't want anyone to mourn her, man.  She loved her faithless husband, and was a clear admirer of the stoner ethic.  His daughter Heather (Stefania LaVie Owen) is likewise hypnotized by her father's eccentricity.  She even feels badly when she freezes his share of his wife's inheritance.  At least until he finally finishes that book he always talks about.

Harmony has made a film that really does seem to validate the likes of Moondog.  There is no judgment, but there's more than mere document.  Richard Linklater presented a matter of fact look at American teenagers in DAZED AND CONFUSED.  One of those kids was a guy named Wooderson, played by McConaghey in his film debut.  Harmony has taken the perhaps twenty five year later version of that character and given him a colorful Florida canvas on which to wander, experiencing amusing vignettes with actors like Zac Efron and Martin Lawrence.  He also shares a hot tub with Snoop Dog (not playing himself) and Jimmy Buffett (who is).  The film never apologizes for anyone's behavior.  Moondog's slimebag agent, played a bit over the top by Jonah Hill, even gloats that he loves being rich, 'cause he can treat people poorly and they can't do anything about it.  Neither he or anyone else is cast into a caustic light.  Interesting.

Korine has received lots of praise for his possibly irresponsible movie.  It is quite enjoyable and even great in certain moments (very funny at times, too), and it's hard to debate that the director got away with it, even if it didn't do well at the box office.  I'm sure the cult will form and Moondoggies the world over will sit and envy this character between tokes forevermore.