Joaquin Phoenix in Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (Scott Patrick Green/Amazon Studios)

After what is probably the biggest bender ever put to film since Leaving Las Vegas, a young man wakes up in the most nightmarish position anyone would ever want to wake up to after a night of drinking. He is strapped into a rotating bed in a hospital and told that he was in a terrible accident and will never walk again. That young man, John Callahan (Joaquin Phoenix), who would go on to become a celebrated cartoonist, is the subject of Gus Van Sant’s biopic.

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot is a recovery film, both Callahan’s recuperation from a paralyzing accident and, more prominently, his treatment for alcoholism. He continues to drink after his release from the hospital, now only being able to grasp the bottle in his arms while pulling the cork out with his mouth. The state gives him a live-in attendant, Tim (Tony Greenhand), an aloof hippy who doesn’t mind enabling Callahan’s habits. But after a particularly bad day when Tim leaves Callahan’s house forgetting to take the cork out of the bottle for him, Callahan has an awakening, seeing a vision of his dead mother, and decides to give sobriety a try.

Callahan orders Tim to take him to an AA meeting the next day. There, we are introduced to the group leader, Donnie (Jonah Hill), a gay man rocking a Tom Petty look who wears his shirts buttoned down and smokes long-stemmed cigarettes. Donnie, a trust fund kid, lives in his deceased grandparents’ lush estate, seems not to work for a living, and devotes himself to his sobriety and helping others work through theirs. Donnie takes Callahan on as his sponsor, inviting him into his closed group he calls his “piglets”—but he warns him, it’s not going to be easy.

Van Sant’s storytelling utilizes a whirlwind nonlinear approach. Although there is the main narrative arc of Callahan’s physical and 12-step recovery, the story line alternates between a closed AA meeting sometime in the late 1970s/early ’80s, Callahan giving a speech at a retrospective of his work, and then to him simply recounting his life story to some skateboarding kids on the street.

Fans of Phoenix’s performance in The Master will see shades of that character in this film—the man knows how to play a drunk. He gets the whimsy as well as the sudden downturns the drug affects on a person. But once his recovery starts, we actually get to see a softer side of Phoenix that hasn’t been around in a while. Callahan, despite the dark humor of his comic strips, had a lot of warmth. Perhaps by using twisted and, some would say, offensive humor in his artwork, he exposes taboos in a way that cuts through to some truths. Also, Phoenix, working with Van Sant for the first time since 1995’s To Die For, seems to be having a great time in the role—just watch him zoom around on that electric wheelchair. Supposedly he even requested to perform some of his own stunts in the wheelchair.

Jonah Hill is the scene stealer here, as Donnie. He’s almost unrecognizable at first, rocking that Tom Petty hair and a bushy beard. Some people may be tired of seeing straight men become celebrated for playing gay characters, but Hill really owns the role. Hill has some of the best moments in the movie, and I will stake that he has one of the funniest line readings of the year when he lambasts Tim, Callahan’s cute attendant, during one of the meetings. Heck, even Jack Black’s Dexter, has shades of queerness. The scene when Dexter picks Callahan up at the party, sniffing out a fellow drunk, and offers to take him to another party across town where there are less-stuck-up women, could easily have been a shrouded gay come-on.

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot is inspirational, heartbreaking, and a downright joy to watch—a jaundiced feel-good movie. There’s a lot of positivity in here, especially in Callahan’s glee in sexual reawakening after his accident. This film should be in the conversation come awards season, especially for Hill.