In fact, the only elder Doc seeks out is his oracular Aunt Reet (’70s film icon Jeannie Berlin). Thankfully, “Inherent Vice” is devoid of the usual father-son conflict in Anderson’s work (“Magnolia,” “There Will Be Blood,” “The Master”). Doc also trusts his girlfriend Penny Kimball (Reese Witherspoon), a Los Angeles Deputy DA, who calls him a “dirty hippie.” The film’s action, most of it entwined in ropey tentacles of burning pot smoke and definitely not taking place anywhere near the “straight world,” is narrated by the charming Sortilege (Joanna Newsom), a member of Doc’s inner circle whose advice he trusts. She wants Dodge Dart-driving Doc to put a stop to it. Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), is the target of a conspiracy cooked up by his slutty wife Sloane (Serena Scott Thomas) and her lover. In a plot recalling both Robert Altman’s Raymond Chandler-inspired “The Long Goodbye” (1973) and the Robert Towne-scripted 1974 classic “Chinatown,” Shasta fears that her current boyfriend, rapacious real-estate mogul Michael Z. Shasta Fay is a willowy, long-legged vision in period temptress chic provided by Academy Award-winning costume designer Mark Bridges (“The Artist”). There, the stoned, sandal-clad private detective Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) finds himself re-enchanted by former flame and femme fatale Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston), a stunner whose name conjures up fairies, volcanoes and movie stars, if not a Peter Max collage. In its way as creatively accomplished as “Birdman,” the movie, shot on film, is an art-house “Hot Tub Time Machine” journey (based on a novel by Thomas Pynchon) to the swinging Venice Beach, Calif., of the 1970s. Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice” might just be the most marvelously intoxicating bong hit of the decade.
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