My Psychedelic Love Story (2020, Errol Morris) (Patreon)

47/100

Not sure why Morris thought he had a feature here—Harcourt-Smith's story might have worked as a First Person episode, perhaps, but there's surprisingly little to it, and she's not inherently fascinating enough to compensate. Judging from her on-camera remarks, she actually reached out to him after seeing Wormwood, which made her wonder whether the C.I.A. might have manipulated her into getting Leary arrested in Kabul; the film barely addresses that question, though, raising it as a possibility and then quickly moving on. Instead, we're mostly just treated to Harcourt-Smith's reminiscences, which are a little heavy on name-dropping and rich-kid privilege for my taste. (I did appreciate Morris' polite silence when she claims that her friend Tommy inspired the Rolling Stones' famous song "Tommy the Tumbling Dice.") She can be very charming at times, but that's just not enough to sustain 101 minutes, especially given how much we already know about Leary. Plays like a much blander Tabloid, while also teasing revelations that never arrive. Morris does have a lot of fun with the lysergic element, splashing the screen with groovy fonts and digitally warping still photos so that they seem to undulate; his pop-culture interludes, on the other hand, are atypically on-the-nose (cutting to footage from the Garbo film when Harcourt-Smith compares herself to Mata Hari; a scene from The Blue Angel when that's mentioned; etc.), and recurring Alice in Wonderland imagery feels random despite a direct reference (in part because said reference likewise feels random). I've been mildly disappointed by previous Morris films—though not, I should note, by American Dharma, the one that everyone else found wanting—but this is the first time that he's struck me as being on autopilot.