Whenever I think about the greatest film directors in the English Language, my vote for the best is Stanley Kubrick. In the years since his passing, the one director I have always said comes close to the level of his consistency is Paul Thomas Anderson.
Following his solid debut with Hard Eight, Paul Thomas Anderson had a streak of films that ranged from being quite good to flat out masterpieces such as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood, The Master, and Phantom Thread.
With that filmography, I cannot help but be excited when someone announces that P.T.A. has a brand new film coming out. However, I can't deny that with the release of his last couple of films, I kept thinking to myself: "Will Paul Thomas Anderson ever release a dud?"
Yes.
In 2021, he did.
A lot has been written online in articles or on forums or on various Letterboxd accounts that Licorice Pizza has issues.
Take your pick:
1) It hints at a pedophilia.
2) It has a white man talking in an offensive Japanese accent.
3) The movie doesn't really have a plot and kind of drifts along.
The first two points are certainly problematic but the truth is that I found myself baffled by how aimless and erratic and messy this film was.
Licorice Pizza begins in 1973 as we see 15 year old child actor Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman) getting ready to get his photo taken on high school picture day.
Although, don't get too settled in the high school locale because you aren't going to see young Gary set foot in this high school again.
When getting in line, a young worker with the group taking the photos catches his eye: Alana (Alana Haim). He immediately tries flirting with her but she rebuffs him as a 25 year old woman should to a 15 year old....but she is intrigued by his candor and accept his invitation to dinner with the caveat that she is only showing up as his friend.
When Gary's mother is unable to accompany him to NY for a press tour, Alana agrees to be his chaperone. Gary still has romantic intentions despite the age difference and is, of course, very jealous when Alana begins dating his co-star Lance...which ends rather abruptly when he proclaims himself as an Atheist to her devout Jewish family.
This is when the movie then takes a sharp turn.
Gary finds himself in a shop being enticed by a glorious new item: the water bed.
Oh yes, remember when water beds were considered the best possible option for your sleeping pleasure? Side note: I do recall as a kid being fascinated by water beds and wishing that I could one day have one of my own. I also wanted to work as a cashier as a child so let's just say I thankfully grew out of some questionable idiotic goals in life.
Out of nowhere, it appears that 15 year old Gary has become a businessman and is selling waterbeds...and he has brought along Alana to be his partner and has his 8 year old brother and his other teenage friends assisting.
Are you lost yet?
Do you feel very confused and like I am not making any sense?
Well now you get to share in the bewilderment I felt as I watched the rest of this movie unfold.
Like I said before, Licorice Pizza has had its fair share of criticism online and from certain critics but it is still getting rapturous praise overall and has managed to do fairly well on the awards circuit in terms of nominations. For me, I consider this to be a case of: "Did I watch the same movie as everybody else?".
There was simply no cohesive storyline...and while some movies can work with essentially having no storyline (for some reason, the first movie that came to mind was My Dinner with Andre which isn't to imply Licorice Pizza comes anywhere close to that), there was this sense that PTA wanted to tackle multiple topics but didn't seem to care to try to organically flow into those stories or even care to try to make them make any sense.
You have this rather bizarre relationship leading through the film that I frankly didn't care about. I feel like I don't fault either of the actors with this as Hoffman and Haim perform well together but they can't manage to find anything in the text/direction that makes me want to support them...and SHOULD we even be supporting them?
In the end, she is a 25 year old woman and he is a 15 year old guy...and while you may say she has no romantic intentions towards him, that isn't where the film eventually takes us.
On one hand, I don't want to sound like some kind of sexual prude either. Age gaps are nothing to be judgmental about...as long as the person is over 18. I do have to wonder if the film would be getting the kind of controversy it is getting had the gender roles been reversed.
In 2021, we actually have a prime example of this.
In Sean Baker's Red Rocket, we watch the character Mikey played by Simon Rex pursue the character of Strawberry (Suzanna Son), who is 17 years old. For the record, Rex is 47 years old so you are looking at a THIRTY YEAR AGE DIFFERENCE.
There is one simple answer to this: Red Rocket didn't get widespread attention but also, even from those who DID see it, I only rarely saw anyone bring up the age difference despite the fact it was far more egregious.
Oh, and an older man with a younger girl seems to be more acceptable to society...yay sexism...
Aside from the age difference controversy, the other bit that has generated even more vitriol are the scenes involving a white man speaking to his Japanese wife with an offensive Japanese accent. It is being played for laughs but it really offers ZERO bearing to the plot (if you can call it a plot) or any kind of worth to the film as a whole.
Then you get these random bits involving Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper.
Sean Penn plays actor Jack Holden (based on William Holden) who is meeting with Alana to see if she could possibly work in his upcoming film but then that descends into Holden wanting to perform a motorcycle stunt with Alana onboard the bike with him. After she falls off and he completes the stunt solo, Gary runs to her to see if she is okay and then we never see Holden again.
The movie takes another turn as Gary and the gang are set to install a waterbed at Jon Peters' and Barbra Streisand's house. Peters' is played by Bradley Cooper and while he does make the most of his limited screen time, I am beyond thrilled that he got snubbed for an Oscar nomination. It is a shame that he was even in the conversation for it.
The scene progresses as follows:
-Peters snarks at and insults Gary
-Peters has an offensively gay assistant
-Alana, Gary, and the boys prepare the waterbed and then proceed to flood the house and speed away only to find Peters flagging them down because he has run out of gas.
**Oh yeah, the gas crisis has begun and it is now affecting everyone it seems**
-They take Peters to the gas station and he proceeds to threaten a random stranger to cut line and receive gas.
-Gary and the gang abandon Peters there and proceed to find his car and bash his windshield.
-And like clockwork, THE TRUCK IS OUT OF FUCKING GAS and they are trapped.
**I would say you can't write this stuff but PTA already did.**
Then, because apparently Alana can drive like she has been a stunt driver since childhood, proceeds to coast the large truck backwards down the Hollywood Hills without hitting a single car and then coming to a stop on main thoroughfare...and keep in mind, this is the greater LA Metropolitan Area....and there is not a single car around. I don't care if there is a gas crisis; it is freaking LOS ANGELES, a city notorious for its traffic.
As the boys fill up the truck with gas, Alana sits on the curb and just happens to notice she is in front of a campaign office for a Mayoral candidate named Joel Wachs (Benny Safdie). Looking for a new change, she decides to go work for him...and yet, STILL gets Gary and the boys involved with filming a campaign commercial for him.
Alana seems sexually intrigued by Wachs as he is, you know, age appropriate and when she gets invited to a dinner by him, she is in for a rude awakening.
Wachs is gay and he is there battling with his boyfriend Matthew (Joseph Cross). Wachs is concerned he is being followed so he wants Alana to pose as Matthew's girlfriend so they can leave together. Matthew is devastated and heartbroken with being cast aside and here is what was rather shocking about this scene:
Matthew became the only character in the film I even gave a damn about and he was barely even onscreen. Less than 5 minutes easily.
Considering how screwed up the whole situation was and how inappropriate it was for Wachs to put Alana in this position, I found myself connecting with Cross' Matthew in a surprising way and I had wished we could've somehow seen more of him.
Before Alana and Matthew part ways, he makes a comment how men are the worst...but somehow, that makes her long for Gary more.
Like clockwork, Gary and Alana run for each other (not since Forrest Gump has a movie made characters run for seemingly no reason other than they just feel like running) and we end with them literally running towards each other, kissing, and her saying "I love you".
Cliche, party of one, your table is ready.
Licorice Pizza is a baffling film. I cannot even begin to tell you how much I sat there not understanding how this film could even manage to receive a rave review.
The sad truth is that in the first half hour or so of the film, I actually really really liked it and was enjoying it...but the shift with the mattress business just felt so random and out of nowhere and implausible that it made it hard for the film to pull me back in.
The film certainly didn't try to. If anything, it was like PTA wanted to create a series of vignettes and failed at making it flow properly. I suppose it is hard to make things flow when you have next to nothing to hold your movie up.
And just for the record, the title of the movie (which references a record store chain that used to be all over LA) has no direct correlation to the film. The original title, Soggy Bottom, made more sense because it tied into the mattress storyline...and yet that title sucked.
PTA was quoted as follows: "If there's two words that make me kind of have a Pavlovian response and memory of being a child and running around, it's 'licorice' and 'pizza' [...] It instantly takes me back to that time." He added that the words "seemed like a catch-all for the feeling of the film [...] that go well together and maybe capture a mood."
Well...there is a lot of running around in this movie...and a lot of randomness...the title fits in an ironic way...but it would've been just as fitting to call this movie "Red Vines Lasagna" or "Twizzlers Manicotti".
RATING: **/*****
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