Boogie Nights bought Paul Thomas Anderson enough creative capital to do whatever the hell he wanted on his next film, and he spent every penny of it. He delivered 1999’s Magnolia, a 3+ hour melodrama that follows a dozen main characters and culminates in a rain of frogs.

This is a glorious, full-hearted mess of a movie. It could easily lose 20-30 minutes (something Anderson himself now admits) and yet its grand ambition is one of its greatest charms. And as a time capsule of Anderson’s early development as an auteur, I’m glad it exists in its fascinating, imperfect original form.

Magnolia chronicles a day in the life of a kaleidoscope of troubled people in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. The characters are all connected one way or another, either biologically or thematically, with a quiz show titled ‘What Do Kids Know?’ serving as the fulcrum of the many story lines.

The film’s overarching theme is the damage visited on children by flawed adults, and Anderson serves up numerous overlapping examples. The most successful storyline for me on this rewatch was that of Tom Cruise’s Frank T.J. Mackey, a self-help guru for incels. We see one of his toxic seminars, then sit in as he’s challenged by a probing interviewer, and finally follow him to the death bed of his absentee father, where he breaks down in heartbreaking fashion.

Cruise is mesmerizing in the role. It’s flabbergasting that he lost his best chance at an Academy Award when the trophy went to Michael Caine, picking up his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar, for the forgettable Cider House Rules. No wonder Cruise turned to churning out Mission Impossible movies after this.

This time around, I felt the film sagging a bit in its middle section, especially when the score starts working overdrive and the pace becomes relentless. Some of the dialogue in this portion feels overly written, too, struggling for a profundity that comes effortlessly in other parts of the film.

But things come to a crescendo during an extended monologue by Jason Robards, as the dying patriarch Earl Partridge (Frank’s father), and everything from there on out is pitch perfect. That includes the film’s two boldest strokes: a group singalong of Aimee Mann’s haunting ‘Wise Up’ and the apocalyptic rain of frogs.

If Boogie Nights was Anderson’s Goodfellas, Magnolia is his take on Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, another sprawling exploration of troubled Los Angelenos. But those moments of magical realism make the film a thrilling original.

[Note: Aimee Mann’s music plays a central role in Magnolia, including today’s Oscar-nominated Song of the Day. Anderson’s appreciation of Mann is evident in the fact that he shot the song’s video during the film’s production, asking his A-list cast to play background characters during her performance.]