I can only think I like Inherent Vice, since the more I try to wrap my head around it, the more it slips away. Like many of writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies, especially his last three, it’s ironic the clearest word to sum them up is opaque. His films feel burnt at the edges, like catching a glimpse of a person just as they turn the corner but you can’t make out enough detail, so you follow to get another look and another until all is clear. The more you’re willing to follow Anderson down a pot-smoke rabbit hole, the more rewarding Inherent Vice will be. Multiple viewings may be required. It helps that it’s all so, so funny, with an absurdist comic tone that lends more laughs than you expect. Scratch that. This is a comedy, albeit an epic one infused with the grandeur of an era that’s actually more a state of mind than a history lesson. It’s a kaleidoscope that’s quasi-political, psuedo-spiritual, and treats cannabis consumption like a religious order: How else could you provide the groove-out vibey vibes? Such were the attitudes of 1970s California, or so the film vividly depicts, making Inherent Vice not just a place or a time, but a feeling.

We know the plot, the setup, the femme fatale, and of a disappearance quickly into the picture. Our hero—if he can be called a hero— is Larry “Doc” Sportello, played by Joaquin Phoenix like a Cheech and Chong impersonation of The Maltese Falcon private eye Sam Spade. We’re introduced to the convoluted plot through voiceover by Doc’s Assistant (Joanna Newsome), who acts as a bumbling stream of consciousness and as a narrator, and then by ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay (Katherine Waterston), who has a sort of flower-power radiance that intoxicates the cinema screen. She’s sleeping with big shot real-estate mogul, Mickey Wolfmann, (Eric Roberts). Or she was—he’s gone missing, and she wants Dearest Doc to find him. Shasta warns it goes further, and pleads for Doc to ask the girl he’s going with, District Attorney Penny Kimball (Reese Witherspoon), to investigate. There’s a boiling plot to steal his fortune, and from there the investigation erupts into a zigzagging labyrinth of story beats that confront Doc with an All-American detective named Bigfoot (Josh Brolin), a lesbianonic message parlor, a reenactment of The Last Supper with pizza, and a delirious joyride with Martin Short as a zany dentist.