Harmony Korine’s “The Beach Bum” has an infectiously shambling, loosey-goosey vibe. You could think of this stoner romp as a quasi-sequel tothe director’s blistering 2013 ode to youthful American hedonism and its discontents, but it’s more like that movie’s endearingly obnoxious little brother — sweeter, mellower, less hellbent on outrage.
Although maybe not quite as good a time as McConaughey seems to be having. Wearing a stringy blond wig, a fanny pack and a succession of aggressively gaudy shirt-and-shorts ensembles, he makes Moondog a fount of lunatic joy, the vulgar life of every Florida party. He’s the joker you’ll see urinating off the side of a dock or jumping out of a hot tub to perform an impromptu thong-and-dance number.
If so, however, he also has a bit of the Dude from “The Big Lebowski” in his pop-cultural DNA, plus a few lashings of Alien, the millennial-thug-life Gatsby so memorably played by James Franco in “Spring Breakers.” But unlike Alien, Moondog has no use for guns and little interest in menace.
That’s about as much plot as “The Beach Bum” has or needs as it slips into aggressively shaggy-dog mode, conjuring a mood of grief and desperation that is almost immediately shooed away by the sheer warmth of Moondog’s idiot bonhomie. Which is not to say that his charm is irresistible. His newly married daughter, Heather , who usually gives him the same mystifying free pass everyone else does, refuses to bail him out. His literary agent is not much more supportive.
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