SXSW 2019 Review: THE BEACH BUM: McConaughey Embarks On Booze-Soaked Journey Of Cheerful Nihilism

I can’t get over how there’s a scene in The Beach Bum, Harmony Korine’s latest Florida romp, where Jimmy Buffett (as himself) hangs out with Matthew McConaughey’s titular Bum, Moondog, and Snoop Dogg’s Lingerie in a hot tub, on a yacht, wearing nothing but thongs, and smoking cartoonishly-sized joints. More importantly, I can’t get over how that’s just a regular scene in this booze-soaked adventure, where Korine doesn’t let a second go by without this kind of decadent absurdity. It’s Alien’s mantra come to life: Spring Break Forever.

As Korine himself put it to the raving audience at SXSW moments before the lights down, this film is a comedy through and through. But this, of course, does not mean that it’s not jam-packed with the kind of polarizing ambiguity that is perhaps the most defining feature of his work. In essence, The Beach Bum is a fantasy par excellence about life without consequences; a thought exercise in what it would look like if someone truly lived without a care in the world. And yet it’s a world away from the sinister cynicism of Spring Breakers.

Instead, the brand of nihilism peddled here is bizarrely cheerful, an extreme way of thinking of the world as an oyster.

Spring Break Forever

To put it another way, The Beach Bum is a film about an alcoholic who never seems to get a hangover. The closest the script comes to a concrete arc, and perhaps the only instance where Moondog’s actions actually result in anything substantial, is his late wife’s, Isla Fisher as Minnie, will, which demands that he finish his poetry collection lest he miss out on her fortune. The rest is a series of meandering antics. Even the threat of losing his money, the very fuel of his carefree lifestyle, seems to unfaze Moondog.

There are always his friends, the über rich R&B singer, Lingerie, or the ship captain who runs a bogus tour company, Captain Wack (Martin Lawrence). This is, of course, not to mention new friends who are just around the corner, like the erratic alcoholic he meets in rehab, Flicker (Zac Efron), who prefers to go by Tiger.

Everyone is happy to help because everyone loves Moondog. He walks down random Miami streets and people call out his name. He rides his boat, and passers-by wave at him. Even the judge at his trial (the crime being trashing his own home) confesses that she loves his poetry. It’s fun, exhilarating even, to watch such a free spirit mess around, and McConaughey, with his drawl and giggles, is the perfect vehicle for just that. However, there is also something inherently unsettling about witnessing a rich white man being granted such surreal leeway time and time again.

The only person who comes close to standing up to Moondog is his daughter, Heather (Stefania LaVie Owen), and even her words fall completely flat on Moondog’s ears. He proclaims time and time again that he loves her, but he doesn’t seem to care in any shape or form about her feelings, which, though mixed at first, become very much positive by the very end. With the exception of one random act of violence, Moondog doesn’t seriously harm anyone throughout the film, but he also doesn’t seem capable of comprehending the significance of literally anything that does not directly coincide with his quest for immediate bliss.

It doesn’t help that the film itself seems to treat its women as little more than another path to euphoria for Moondog. In a film where every fifteen minutes there is at least one scene involving multiple topless women, there are only two named female characters, and those are Moondog’s wife and daughter. It’s not a good look.

Nothing Really Matters, Everyone Can See

Rather than simply not address these issues, the film goes out of its way to remind us that nothing in this strange dimension truly matters. Moondog mourns the death of his wife, but he’s riding a bike around his mansion in a thong a few beats later. Captain Wack loses a foot to a shark he thought was a dolphin, but he and Moondog laugh it off as soon as the EMT arrives. In no way does this approach alleviate the film of its problematic undertones, but it does make the experience, for better or worse, more palatable.

Even as I felt uncomfortable with much of Moondog’s escapades, I couldn’t help but laugh till my ribs ached. His carefree ethos is so infused with the film’s structure, with its very logic, that it’s honestly hard to not just sit back and enjoy the ride.

The scene that perhaps best encapsulates my feelings towards The Beach Bum arrives early. Moondog is shuffling down the beachfront, holding a white kitten he just found on the street, when he spots a man playing a tuba, looking out to the sea. Before we can even register that there is a random man just playing tuba on a boardwalk, Moondog kicks him from behind and the man yelps as he falls into the water with his tuba. It is, to put it plainly, a dick move, one that is completely unnecessary. And yet, I could not stop laughing.

This kind of chaos permeates every single decision Korine makes, and it renders some ostensibly bad ones surprisingly enjoyable. Take Jonah Hill’s cameo in which he plays Moondog’s literary agent, Lewis. Hill puts on, what is fair to say, one of the worst southern accents I have ever heard in my life (I’m assuming New Orleans?) so much that I thought it inevitable that one of the characters would actually call him out on it. And yet, I never wanted his fleeting scenes with Moondog to stop. This is in large part due to the sheer, palpable joy that every actor seems to be genuinely experiencing in the making of this movie. This level of absurdity does not work if everyone involved is not having the time of their lives.

The Beach Bum: Conclusion

I hesitate to let go of my inhibitions and lovingly embrace the antics of Moondog. He would be an awful person to hang out with, the kind of ‘friend’ who is really an acquaintance that you only see when you are jaded and want to have pure, dumb fun. But that is precisely the DNA of this movie, pure, dumb fun. By being so grounded in a world that is definitively not our own, it forgoes any kind of message, any kind of direct implication.

Again, that doesn’t absolve The Beach Bum, but it does invite the viewer, if only for ninety minutes, to imagine a world free of implication and consequence, where a nearly-blind man can smoke good weed and fly a plane. It’s a fantasy with no real-life application. You will probably learn nothing. But you might have a hell of a time learning nothing. For Moondog, that’s all that matters.

Do you think it’s worth watching a film that’s just pure fun?

The Beach Bum premiered at the 2019 South by Southwest Film Festival. It will be released in the US on March 29th.