When I think of Paul Thomas Anderson, chill hangout vibes aren’t what generally comes to mind. More like the cocaine-tinged tragic-comic edginess of porno drama Boogie Nights, or the surreal operatic swells of the capitalism-as-apocalypse period piece There Will Be Blood. But here we are, at the tail end of 2021, and the director has given us what we (possibly) needed most of all: a laid-back period comedy-drama without a single superhero, and nary an explosion in sight. Just hanging with a bunch of young folks enjoying some chill vibes.
When you need to destress, there’s not much better than putting on a movie populated by a cast of characters you just want to hang out with, whether because they’re likable or just interesting. These are movies that aren’t particularly plot-driven.
It’s not that nothing happens in them (although that’s nearly true in a couple of cases), but that’s it is the characters driving them forward, rather than story elements pulling them along—as though a filmmaker took a handful of interesting characters to a compelling location and left them to run wild. Sometimes the results are philosophical, sometimes poignant, and sometimes deeply wacky.