The Beach Bum is a simplistic, aimless, amoral, deplorable, and stupid movie. It's also bizarre, goofy, shocking, pretty, and weirdly captivating.
Harmony Korine (of Spring Breakers) brings his typical pseudo-gonzo directing style, but this time with more pizzazz, glitz, and—for lack of a better term—artistry. Mostly, I think Korine just told Matthew McConaughey to become a quasi-philosophical, self-absorbed lowlife, and then rolled the cameras as McConaughey chewed the scenery.
And McConaughey certainly does. His character, named Moondog, is a drifter (or maybe more like a buoy) who floats around the bars, boats, and brothels of the Florida Keys, blowing money and getting blown in any way he can. He's a man who lives by no set of rules, unless following a rule turns out to be the most pleasurable option. Ultimately, he does whatever he wants, at whatever pace he wants, and just sort of figures it out as he goes. This is all made possible by his mega-millionaire wife Minnie (Isla Fisher), who, though maybe slightly better-adjusted to functional society, is entirely accustomed to and at peace with Moondog's free-spirit antics.
Moondog goes with the flow and lives a life of modest possessions, but he's not without pretense. He's a prolific poet, often spewing big, fancy words about the sun and the sea, and his penis, and occasionally writing them down on his typewriter. It's apparently not all hot air, though, because it's made clear multiple times that Moondog at one time was beloved and revered for his published poetry, and even had a dedicated fan base of some sort. That, along with the money he acquired from it, has all been pissed away with his drunken complacence, but that's no problem thanks to Minnie. However, when circumstances begin to change, Moondog realizes he has to write another long-awaited masterpiece if he wants to continue to afford his lifestyle.
The Beach Bum is littered with unexpected, oddball cameos from Martin Lawrence (as a shady dolphin-tour guide), Jonah Hill (Moondog's agent), Zac Efron (a fellow rehab patient), Snoop Dogg (basically just himself), and even Jimmy Buffett (literally just himself). What's impressive is that these cameos rarely feel out-of-place or like contrived excuses to add star power to a film without direction. They all do about as convincing a job as McConaughey digging into the derelict depravity of their characters.
It's essentially an actor vehicle, or rather, an actor experiment, kept afloat entirely by the oddball performances and physicality with which their antics are realized. The plot doesn't really matter, and if there is a moral to the story, it's a bad one. Most of the peripheral characters are hyperbolic representations of the rest of us—"normal" people just trying to be a part of society, and apparently idiots for it.
The Beach Bum is definitely not for everyone. The story is stringy and insubstantial, and perhaps would have worked better in about half the runtime. The comedy is more a mix of befuddled head-shakes and shock value (not that I'm one to complain about that), and there's not much in the way of uproarious gut-busters. It's a pretty-looking film, saturated in the neon cyans, oranges, pinks, and greens of the tropical United States, and the cast creates a lived-in atmosphere of depraved individuals who have apparently figured out the key to happiness: doing whatever the hell you want. Maybe it's not a sustainable, healthy, or ethical lifestyle, but it makes for a solid two hours of escapism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQWgZ1OXBzU&w=585