The Beach Bum

Seemingly channelling an older version of his Dazed and Confused character Wooderson, McConaughey seems to be having a ball ("I just want to have a good time, suck the nectar out of life," is Moondog's philosophy), it's just a pity audiences aren't likely to share his delight.

You'll need a lot of patience - or weed - to stick with Harmony Korine's paper-thin, larky portrait of a literary bum in crisis.

There's something haunting, and quietly lacerating, about McConaughey's portrait of a man who has effectively anesthetised himself to pain, who has made the pleasure principle an all-consuming philosophy.

What "The Beach Bum" celebrates as transgression is pure tedium. What it takes for divine lunacy is frat house doggerel.

Such hedonism isn't irredeemable in and of itself, and yet, one wishes Korine were interested in more than just testing boundaries.

In The Beach Bum, the writer-director turns his observational eye and provocateur verve to a Miami community of misfits, who chase bliss in sex, drugs and misadventures.

At his best, Korine is an outsider artist speaking to the misfit within each of us - or, alternatively, making us recoil at the horrors lodged inside society's collective unconscious. But with "The Beach Bum," he's also trying our patience.

I, admittedly, had a hard time getting on its woozy wavelength. But The Beach Bum is a work of undeniable commitment and craft...