For me it does exactly that. PTA's movies are well made and quality, but you don't get credit for riding on another director's coat-tail..
I disagree, of course. His movies have been widely praised by the critics. I'm sure they are very well aware of whether an idea is original or not. And this is the most important thing in making movies, I believe. P.T. Andreson must have been inspired by Altman's style of movie making, which is fine and actually very good as he is using it very smartly in his movies in order to tell his story perfectly.
@ king ale: De Palma has made a career on copying Hitchcock.
And I wouldn't throw around the word masterpiece that easily.
I wouldn't call that "copying". He's been influenced by Hitchcock but his way of story telling, the concepts and notions have been different. Legends like Hitchcock are like teachers, they are known for the influence they had on cinema at their time and do still have on the recent filmmakers. I once read somewhere that it's all useless if you tend to copy the works of great directors such as Kubrick or Bergman as those works have already been made in the best way possible. Use the technics to tell your own story, an original one. And P.T. Anderson is IMO, doing that.