Anderson's period gumshoe mystery comes up short on clues

The intrusive, omniscient voice-over narration from a minor, unexplored character who couldn't possibly know all the information she imparts?

Sorry, I'm not a fan.

Joaquin Phoenix's performance as a reactive, quasi-comical stoner detective chortling and bumbling his way through a Chandler-esque journey into greed, corruption, drugs and sex?

It's workable, but lacking in the capacity to enthrall and fully exploit opportunities to be appropriately hilarious and truly touching.

Paul Thomas Anderson's "Inherent Vice," the only movie so far to be based on a Thomas Pynchon novel, presents a mildly lengthy (148 minutes) gumshoe adventure that, like its pot-smoking protagonist, takes its own sweet time to get places.

And sometimes you might wonder if we actually needed to go to all of those places in the first place.

Like Anderson's wonderfully wrought first feature, "Boogie Nights," "Inherent Vice" possesses a keen sense of time and place (1970 L.A., from sandy beach fronts to stylized halls of corporate arrogance). The decor, the cars, the knickknacks, clothes, makeup, hair and artifacts deliver a hyper sense of 1970 authenticity, though not a single Nehru jacket is on view.

At his beachfront home in Gordita Beach, private detective Doc Sportello (Phoenix, adorned with untrimmed mutton-chops, unkempt hair and general hippie garb) is surprised by the unexpected appearance of an old flame named Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston, daughter of Sam Waterson).

She sports a nice dress and a shorter hairstyle. In essence, looking the way she thought she never would, according to the narration.

Shasta hasta aska Doc for help. She's been seeing a billionaire land developer named Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts). Now, his wife and her boyfriend are pressuring her to help kidnap Wolfmann, or maybe just get him committed to an institution to get access to his money.

Doc heads over to Wolfmann's housing development, Channel View Estates, where he enters a sex parlor while on the trail of an Aryan Brotherhood biker working as Wolfmann's bodyguard.

Doc finds the bodyguard only after being conked on the head, then waking up next to his dead body, while L.A.'s finest, led by crew-cut cop "Bigfoot" Bjornsen (Josh Brolin, with a perfectly square jaw and jar head), surround him.

The fuzz (aka cops) push Doc to help them locate Wolfmann, prompting the drug-ingesting detective to collide with a kaleidoscope of oddball characters, among them presumed-dead musician Coy Harlingen (Owen Wilson), lusty and coke-dispensing dentist Dr. Blatnoyd (a delightfully daffy Martin Short), Doc's sometime girlfriend and assistant D.A. Penny (Reese Witherspoon), plus a general pal (Benicio Del Toro) who thankfully explains the plot to us whenever the voice-over narrator fails to help us understand what's going on.

The narrator does borrow a line from Pynchon's novel, asserting that American life is something to run away from.

"Inherent Vice" (the phrase comes from a business term referring to normal accidents that can't be avoided, such as broken eggs) is all about the metaphorical broken eggs at the close of the Age of Aquarius.

Unlike Doc, Anderson's foray into the realm of Philip Marlowe and Mike Hammer doesn't pack much of a buzz.

“Inherent Vice”

★ ★ ½

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Katherine Waterston, Josh Brolin, Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson

Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson

Other: A Warner Bros. release. Rated R for drug use, language, nudity, sexual situations, violence. 148 minutes