Make way boy and girls, Harmony Korine is back at it again! If you’re familiar with the man, congratulations, you have officially entered into hipster territory. Harmony Korine is a relatively unknown filmmakers whos only mainstream hit was 2013’s Spring Breakers. To many, it was a dumpster fire of a movie that was so sleazy and sophomoric that people will jump out of their seats to tell you how bad it is. As for me, it’s one of my favorite movies ever made. I love it from head to toe, and Korine’s latest film, The Beach Bum, looks to be just as surreal and nonsensical in all of the best ways.
While the plot is still relatively unknown, the movie will follow wealthy bum named Moondog (Matthew McConaughey), who drinks, does drugs, parties, and writes poetry for a living. It seems like Moondog needs to complete a book that he’s been working on for years or else he’ll face jail time, but that hardly seems to matter. The Beach Bum seems set to show off crazy imagery, cool cats being cool, and will try to make the audience high on atmosphere alone. For Christ sake, Snoop Dogg is one of the supporting characters and there’s a bird that’s addicted to crack. It’s gonna be a wild ride.
And yet, something about this seems off. Not that the movie doesn’t look good, because it does, but Harmony Korine is known for playing nasty tricks with his trailers. All of the advertisements for Spring Breakers showed it off as a raucous teen party movie like Project X or Superbad in order to get young teens or college students into the theater. Once got its target audience in its clutches, it systematically shut down any hope that it was a wild party movie and instead turned into a condemnation of the concept of spring break itself and how short-sighted teenagers and college students can be, chasing cheap thrills out of boredom because they can, damning all repercussions. The Beach Bum may be playing that same trick, but it’s a trick that is at least fascinating to me. Or maybe it’ll just be a 4/20 classic where Moondog and Snoop Dogg do weed on a biplane with a pilot with double cataracts. Either way, this is so far my most anticipated movie of 2019.
The Beach Bum releases March 29th.
