Inherent Vice Review Roundup: Did Critics Like the R-Rated Joaquin Phoenix Stoner Crime Comedy Film?

Joaquin Phoenix and former co-star Reese Witherspoon reunite in the racy crime comedy movie Inherent Vice, which was released on Friday.

In the film, which is set in 1970 in Los Angeles, the actor sports a sweet set of mutton chops as stoner and private investigator Larry "Doc" Sportello, who takes on a case that may hit a little close to home; He helps his ex-girlfriend (Katherine Waterson) try to locate her married boyfriend (Eric Roberts) who is being targeted by his wife (Serena Scott Thomas). During his investigation, he encounters a slew of different characters, including neo-Nazi bikers, a musician, a drug-addicted dentist and the mysterious group Golden Fang.

Witherspoon, who starred with Phoenix in the 2005 film Walk the Line, which won her an Oscar, plays a prosecutor who gets close to his character. The cast also includes Benicio del Toro, The Hunger Games' Jena Malone, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short and Pretty Little Liars' Sasha Pieterse.

Paul Thomas Anderson, who directed films such as Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood and The Master, which starred Phoenix, helmed Inherent Vice and wrote its screenplay, which was adapted from a 2009 novel by Thomas Pynchon.

The movie is rated R for sexual content—including graphic nudity, drug use, explicit language and violence.

Check out what five critics said about Inherent Vice.

1. The Los Angeles Times' Betsy Sharkey says that "Phoenix and the terrific acting ensemble that joins him in this pot-infused '70s-era beach noir create such a good buzz you can almost get a contact high from watching."

"For all of its darker themes, the movie never loses its wicked sense of humor," she writes, adding, "Indeed, Inherent Vice is Pynchon and Anderson at their funniest, loosest and most accessible. The cast seems to thoroughly enjoy being in on the joke. Maybe it's all the weed."

2. Rolling Stone's Peter Travers gives Inherent Vice three out of four stars and says the movie "is packed with s--tfaced hilarity, soulful reveries, stylistic  ingenuity and smashing performances that keep playing back in your head."

"The actors earn the close attention, most of all Josh Brolin, who gives the film a seismic charge as buzz-cut cop Bigfoot Bjornsen, who does extra work on the TV series Adam-12," he adds. "Not only does Brolin get big laughs, he breaks your heart when he finally opens up to Doc about who he really is."

3. Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson says Inherent Vice has "plenty of interesting flourishes, but is too stoned for its own good" and that to him, the movie is "a little too zonked, meandering and overly long, an ultimately pointless story told by a stoned person."

He praises the "fine performances" of del Toro, Brolin and Short and adds that he thinks "the film's women get short shrift."

"Mostly they are stringy-haired beach pixies, or cool hippie chicks, or sprightly sex workers, who act as winking-cool window dressing until their body parts present some narrative function," he writes. "At least Jena Malone makes a funny, sad impression in her one scene as a recovering heroin addict, while Waterston is often captivating in her haunted, dazed murmur," he writes, adding, "In the film's defense, the men don't do all that much either."

4. USA Today's Claudia Puig gives Inherent Vice two and a half out of four stars and says the movie "will leave viewers dazed and confused."

"The cast members are working at the top of their games, particularly the fully committed Joaquin Phoenix as an ultra-convincing doper, sporting some impressive mutton chops," she writes. "The pulpy story, augmented by a voiceover narration (by Joanna Newsom),goes on too long — two and a half hours — absorbing fever dream tangents in a tangled assortment of detours and overlapping subplots. When contrasted with other Anderson films, Vice's pieces don't mesh as seamlessly. Or even add up to much."

5. The Village Voice's Stephanie Zacharek says that "Inherent Vice is in some ways "indulgent in a way a less respected director would never be able to get away with," adding, "And it's two and a half hours long not because it needs to be, but because it can be."

"But there's some zip to it, and Anderson appears to be reconnecting with the pleasure of directing a large ensemble of actors: Some of them come and go in the plot like casual visitors, kicking their shoes off for a moment and then disappearing for long stretches," she writes. "Inherent Vice is just that kind of movie: an open house for all sorts of weirdos and misfits and gloriously off-kilter savants, the sort of thing Anderson pulls off best."