I finally found this on bootleg DVD,
which is the main way people watch movies in Morocco. I know it's
not considered a good idea to compare movies to the books they're
based on, but in the case, it's a bit hard to avoid. The thing is, I
think there might be an insoluble problem here. Because at two and a
half hours, Inherent Vice already feels too
long—and yet, there is a lot of material merrily
excised from the movie. Lots of scenes are missing or severely
abridged, a lot of characters have been cut, and those characters
that remain generally make a lot less of an
impression than they do in the book. Said book isn't the most
coherent of narratives, and yes, that's part of the charm, but you
can't just increase the incoherence and proportionally increase the
charm, which is what the movie, however consciously, appears to be
attempting. I feel as though I would have been seriously lost if I
hadn't already been familiar with the book, which is kind of a
problem, innit? A movie adaptation of a book needs to stand on its
own.
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