I mostly disagree about the lack of subversiveness. It starts playing out as an "earnest trippy oddball comedy" as you say, but it becomes quite obvious by about the halfway point that it is satirizing these types of redemption stories, rather than trying to be a genuine one.

There are multiple key moments where we are trained to think "ah ha, here is the moment where things turn around for the main character - he will realize his wrongdoing and start to clean himself up". He sees his wife cheating, and there is the moment.

But it passes quickly and nobody is the worse for wear.

There is a serious drunk driving accident and a hyper-exaggerated "tender" moment with the dying wife.

It passes.

A fancy lawyer tells the Beach Bum that he will get no money from the wife's death unless he finishes his novel; she designed her will that way in order to provide for his redemption.

This is such a hackneyed plot point that it has to be obvious now that we're in satire land (if it wasn't already).

Then the rehab, and the escape, and the relapses, and again no consequences.

The whole thing reminded me somewhat of Burn After Reading in a different genre, in that it's shot, scored, and written as a straight-up fun stoner redemption movie of this type (and I guess it's the same with Spring Breakers). Trailers could easily be cut from this material to make it look like typical Oscar bait (and they were).

Now, all this being said - I saw it with a streamed Q&A with Korine, McConaughey, and the two female leads. They spoke of it much more as a straight-up stoner comedy, and the "lessons" they said should be taken from it is some nonsense about how you've just gotta chill man, bad things happen but be like the Beach Bum. I don't *think* Korine is actually this dumb, I *think* he understands he's made a parody of Oscar bait redemption movies, and that the Beach Bum character is toxic scum. But the Q&A left me with doubt.

It doesn't matter though. Death of the artist.