I’m all like, hey, I like Paul Thomas Anderson films! So why have I not seen this one? And the answer turns out to be: Because it’s pretty mediocre.

So we’ve got two main characters. Joaquin Phoenix is playing a Joaquin Phoenix-type, an asshole out-of-control violent guy. He’s not Joker, but he might as well be. Philip Seymour Hoffman, meanwhile, is playing a charismatic pseudoscience cult leader, a la L. Ron Hubbard.

Ideally, what would happen is that these two characters would interact in such a way that it would be interesting and yield fresh insights about, idk, cults or toxic masculinity or whatever else. But in fact, nothing. They interact together in banal ways, and become sorta-friends, even while nothing much changes for them.

The movie’s pretty, the acting is great — Phoenix is just doing his thing, but Hoffman’s charismatic cult leader is brilliantly acted, stentorian and funny and wrathful and impish — and I’m pretty sure that’s another Jonny Greenwood soundtrack.

But the movie feels like it should be about something, and I’m not sure it actually is.