Go to the Matt

You never know with award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey. When not hawking Lincolns or Wild Turkey bourbon, he might turn up in anything from a lame romcom (Ghosts of Girlfriends Past), to an edgy neo-noir (Killer Joe), to a genuinely effective drama (Dallas Buyers Club). Quality is a roll of the dice. Based on Amazon recommendations, this past week I took a chance and a gander at two from 2019.

**** ****

The Beach Bum 

Written and directed by Harmony Korine, The Beach Bum features a protagonist (McConaughey) named Moondog who doesn’t rise to the level of anything so dignified as the title. We meet him in Key West where he is drunk, stoned, and (very successfully) lecherous – in fact, we rarely see him in any other condition. He is able to live a life of carefree dissipation because he is rich. More accurately, his wife Minnie is rich. Minnie is as unfaithful as Moondog, including with Moondog’s friend and pot dealer Lingerie (Snoop Dog), but everybody is cool about each other’s sexcapades. Minnie calls Moondog back to Miami to attend their daughter’s wedding. Moondog shows up (still drunk, high, and lecherous), but is disappointed that his daughter Heather chose such a boring normal partner. We learn that Moondog (as Minnie, Heather, and Moondog himself all agree) is a great man because he once wrote lewd raunchy poetry (adolescent fare to judge by the samples given) though he stopped when he could afford just to be a bum.

Minnie and Moondog drive drunk the night of the wedding and Minnie is killed. (It is typical of the film that we see nothing of any effects on the driver [and passengers?] of the car with which they had a head-on.) Moondog discovers that Minnie’s Will prevents him from inheriting her huge fortune unless he publishes another book of poetry. Until then he is broke, and his daughter Heather refuses to advance him money. Naturally, he has to drink, blow dope, and letch even more to get his creative juices flowing. Meantime he is recklessly destructive and even participates in the mugging an old man for cash. But that is OK because he is a great artist, you see.

I have no objection to shameless hedonism as a conscious lifestyle choice. I at least understand nihilism, which posits no value (negative or positive) in either creation or destruction. Yet personal hedonism need not entail a brutal disregard for others, and Moondog isn’t a nihilist. On the contrary, he talks a lot about the positive value of fun. He is careless and destructive for the fun of it. He is a jackass. 96 minutes is too long to spend in his company. The only thing worse would be sitting through one of his poetry readings.

Thumbs Down.

**** ****

Serenity

Low expectations after the previous film thankfully were exceeded in this one, but regrettably not by a lot. Serenity starts out promisingly enough as an apparent homage to classic noir. Promises, promises.

Baker Dill (McConaughey) is an Iraq War vet with PTSD. Taking their son Patrick with her, his wife Karen (Anne Hathaway) left him during the war for a rich man. Dill changed his name and retreated to a subtropical island where he operates a deep sea fishing boat for tourists: think Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not but without the Vichy French. Chronically short of cash, Dill makes some extra as a gigolo for Constance (Diane Lane). He is obsessed by a big tuna named Justice who keeps eluding him, but his mind is taken off the fish when Karen shows up. She says that her husband Frank is an abuser. She says she has arranged this vacation so that Dill can take Frank fishing and kill him. Frank doesn’t know Dill is her ex. She offers Dill $10 million to do the job. Yet there is something screwy about the whole business that goes well beyond a murder scheme, and the more he tries to make sense of it the less sense it makes.

Though prettily filmed, Serenity misses on so many levels (including an absence of spark between McConaughey and Hathaway) that it is rescued to a degree by a “so bad it’s good” quality. But only to a degree.

This is not the shipwreck that The Beach Bum is, but ultimately (despite elements I can’t mention without spoilers) it gets a Thumbs Down.

**** ****

The good news is that 2020 should be a better year for Matthew. I haven’t seen The Gentlemen, currently in theaters, but it is getting generally positive reviews. As for Lincoln cars, they are too expensive for my taste. Wild Turkey isn’t bad for its moderate price, though the “101” variant is to be preferred over the standard bottle.

Serenity Trailer