Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s been called a lot of things over his prodigious career. Light and cartoonish, however, would not likely be two of them.

Yet here we are with "Inherent Vice," which goes down like a late pizza on 4/20 and is cartoonish enough to have multiple characters say the infamous "What’s up, Doc?" There’s even some cartoon boinks and bonks playing on a TV in the background of an early phone call, in case one isn’t convinced of its goofy aims.

And it manages that while being a noir too?! With the genre’s signature densely stylized dialogue and labyrinthine webbing of femme fatales and plot twists and conspiracies that play out like a maze built inside of another maze inside a web inside an enigma, and they’re all made of Rubik’s Cubes, and does anyone have a Tylenol?

"Inherent Vice" has no Tylenol, but it has plenty of weed. I’m not going to say I picked up a second-hand high watching PTA’s latest, but I will say my 15 refills of popcorn and five boxes of Buncha Crunch were exceptionally tasty. The movie is just as delectable, a shaggy-dog stoner noir (stonoir perhaps?) captured through a mesmerizing haze that makes the seemingly impenetrable tangle of plotting into something absorbing, entertaining and eminently watchable. There’s plenty to parse through, but as our lead detective smartly advises, "Thinking comes later."

Adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s novel of the same name, Joaquin Phoenix plays Larry "Doc" Sportello, a baked beach bum hippie private eye living in California in 1970. His easy-going buzz gets a mild harshing when his ex-ladyfriend Shasta Fay (Katherine Waterston, Sam’s daughter) drops by wearing new straight world clothes – mini-dress taking the place of a Country Joe and The Fish shirt – and a new mix of concern and sadness on her face. She’s seeing a guy – real estate big shot Mickey Wolfman (Eric Roberts) – and in the process stumbled across a plan to drop him in a loony bin.

Doc takes on the case, sending him down a confoundingly convoluted trail filled with real estate swindles, the FBI, Nazis working with Black power fighters, a stiff gritted wannabe showbiz cop (Josh Brolin) with a twinkle in his eye for civil rights violations, insane asylums, a missing sax player (Owen Wilson) perhaps not as dead as assumed, handy marine lawyers (Benicio del Toro), ominous warnings about The Golden Fang – either an ominous shipping boat, a coven of drugged up dentists or maybe 10 other, even more sinister things – and old blacklisted movie stars turned into U.S. propaganda machines. The only thing wafting in the air more than corruption and paranoia is a soothing layer of joint smoke (and the occasional whiff from a tank of laughing gas).

In case the last paragraph didn’t give it away, there are a lot of moving parts in "Inherent Vice," all deliriously packed into a "Chinatown"/"The Long Goodbye" shaded mystery that can barely contain it all. There is a thin line of breadcrumbs keeping the audience on the path, but the confusion, however, is all a part of the experience. Anderson manages to put the viewers into the doped up mind of our protagonist Doc: kind of paranoid, kind of laidback and very baffled by every new development. His completely useless, chicken-scratched outline of the case’s major players is our completely useless, chicken-scratched outline.

It’s the same mentality of the time period: the beginning of the end, the winding down of the hippie movement. It's a time when the word love was being sorely overused, chimes our honey-voiced noir-requisite narrator (Joanna Newsom), who seems to come and go out of Doc's reality just like a waft of smoke. What started as optimism – "the hippie dream" – distorted into something else, mostly soaked in paranoia. An all too justified one in a post-Manson world where the government and other interests began to infect and reclaim the movement for itself. 

Doc sees it, from the system providing hippies the heroin to capitalize on its devastating effects – selling the crazy and the cure – to Nazi logos and government informants embedding themselves into hippie parties. Even TV ads laughably pander to hippies watching. One of the best methods of deradicalizing a group or idea is to turn it into a market. Implied by the narrator's brief history of California land use and those displaced in its wake, society has always found a way to move forward no matter the particular group in its path.

Yet even with all those gears churning and strings pulling, "Inherent Vice" takes it all in stride. It's a decidedly enjoyable, easy-going affair. The jokes are delightfully goofy, and thanks to the vibe, viewers don’t as much watch as absorb it through the pores.

Anderson strikes just the tone, just playing up the ridiculousness and wooziness of the time with still the haunt of paranoia and melancholy, of endings and broken promises, occasionally lingering onto the screen. The period soundtrack and Jonny Greenwood's Cali-noir score add to its balance of menace and mellow, smoothly blending playfulness with anxiety. The alarmist noir horns are a nice, classic referential touch, while one mellow but moody early track sounds like a lost recent Radiohead number. All of that combines to make a movie both goofy and straight, relaxed and on edge – sometimes in the same scene.

Anderson's dazed and concerned script can be wrapped up with one scene, a voiceover monologue from Newsom's narrator that eerily ponders if the reach of informants and general corruption has possibly infiltrated so deep inside the hippie lifestyle and movement that the core could be rotten. Doc's internal reaction to this chilling suggestion: "Gee, I don't know."

Even working in comic territory, Anderson predictably draws great performances from his cast as well (also predictable: the movie is gorgeous, shot big on 70mm with plenty of texture and rich color. See it on a large screen; you're welcome in advance).

Phoenix’s easily distracted doper detective summons more laughs from simple glances and modest reactions than most actors snag from a full script of witty banter. He's hilarious with the physical comedy as well, whether it's a great pratfall, having a mini-plant battle with Brolin or merely putting on his sunglasses with smug satisfaction. Phoenix isn't particularly known as a relaxed, easy screen presence, but here, he’s a blast. Even if you’re not following the story, you’re happily following him following the story – or least trying to figure out which way is up.

Brolin is his comedic equal, a proudly straight-laced, self-dignified "renaissance detective" with a hankering for chocolate covered frozen bananas not seen since "Arrested Development" and whose kid pours him whiskey. His interactions with Doc are hilarious verbal ballets – or just straight-up beatings – of mutual disdain and annoyed cooperation. Their final interaction is a giggly bizarre comic goldmine, Phoenix a witness to Brolin's all-consuming (literally) implosion. 

The rest of the cast is just as sharp: Witherspoon as the government official Doc is dating on the down low, del Toro as his goofy marine cohort, the tart-voiced Hong Chau as a perky sex worker who keeps popping up on Doc's quest, Martin Short as a coked-up cad of a dentist and especially Waterston. Her femme fatale – her sweet face overwhelmed with fear, sadness and melancholy – gives "Inherent Vice" a good dose of heart. She also delivers a speech near the final third that's sexy and eerie and disturbing – but above all spellbinding, for Doc and the audience. 

"Inherent Vice" ends with characters – and American society – driving off toward some unknown, vaguely ominous future. At least with Anderson and Phoenix behind the wheel, we’ll get there still riding a solid buzz.