Licorice Pizza
Composite Score: 85.6
Starring: Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, John Michael Higgins, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Skyler Gisondo, Christine Ebersole, Harriet Sansom Harris, Milo Herschlag, Bradley Cooper, Nate Mann, and Benny Safdie
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Writer: Paul Thomas Anderson
Genres: Comedy, Drama, Romance, Coming of Age
MPAA Rating: R for language, sexual material, and some drug use
Box Office: $33.27 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
Licorice Pizza is Paul Thomas Anderson’s film about the relationship between a young actor and a listless young woman living in Southern California in 1973. The film stars Cooper Hoffman (son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) as up-and-coming adolescent actor Gary Valentine across from Alana Haim (of the musical group) as the lovely but untethered Alana Kane. The supporting cast includes cameos from a variety of celebrities, including Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, Harriet Sansom Harris, and Maya Rudolph. The story follows the pair as Gary pursues a romantic relationship with Alana despite their age gap and her consistent rejections, following both of them as they come into something of their own in the midst of the rise of New Hollywood and a mounting oil crisis. The film received a decent amount of critical acclaim, including Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, with additional praise going to the film’s original story and to the performances of the two leads.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
Licorice Pizza’s biggest flaw lies unfortunately in the age gap between its leading characters. While both actors were adults by the time of the film’s release and no actual sexual contact takes place in the film, watching a fifteen-year-old romantically pursue a twenty-five-year-old doesn’t suddenly become okay just because it’s fiction. It’s one thing if this film wanted to make a point about grooming or societal norms around males and females in relationships or something along those lines, but Anderson has crafted a story that seeks to get the audience to support and root for a budding relationship between an adult and a minor – even if it was the 1970s and the adult has some major adjustment issues that put her in a similar life space as the minor. I don’t really see how you can redeem that aspect of the film’s story other than by trying to ignore the age gap, which it refuses to let you do by having Alana reject Gary time and again on the basis of their ages while still seemingly falling in love with him. I try to be as generous as I can in giving films the benefit of the doubt, and I recognize that PTA is known for exploring human relationships outside of your typical romances (see Phantom Thread, Boogie Nights, and/or various plots of Magnolia), but in a time where Hollywood and the film industry have come under so much mostly unwarranted scrutiny surrounding pedophilia and grooming, it just feels really tone deaf to make a film about the offbeat romance that blossoms between an adult and a teen. There’s also some racist moments that occur with John Michael Higgins’s character that are probably supposed to play as satire but feel more like edgy humor that probably shouldn’t have made it into the final cut of the film.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
While its subject matter is certainly problematic, Licorice Pizza’s leads and production design are brilliantly executed, saving the film’s overall vibe. Between the sets, the product name drops, the costumes, and the wacky cameo and side characters, Anderson has given his audience a film that screams early 70’s SoCal and, specifically, coming of age within that setting. The interplay of movie stars, get rich quick schemes, and background political asides about Vietnam and the oil crisis give the film an authentic feeling of being born out of the era to which it calls back. While Anderson would have been only a toddler in 1973, his love of the region and nostalgia for the period become quickly contagious, sucking the audience into that old world that no longer exists.
Helping flesh the world out and draw the audience in are the two lead performers who give phenomenal showings in their roles. Hoffman brings the exact blend of awkwardness and confidence that perfectly encapsulates an adolescent aspiring performer. His outbursts of excitement, longing looks cast at the women in his life (but especially Alana), and unquenchable sense of entrepreneurship give the character that lovable loser nature that Anderson loves to portray in his protagonists (and that Hoffman’s father so often captured himself), and it’s just what the character needs to win the audience to his side. Likewise, Haim’s incessant drifting from interest to interest (both romantic and professional) very much showcases the cultural malaise that captured the young adults of the 1970s and never really stopped recurring in the generations that came afterward. Her passion for nothing in particular but also for everything that her friends might offer her feels eerily reminiscent of the experience of just about everyone in the U.S. who’s ever been twenty-something since the start of Vietnam. Their lack of direction brings them together, pointing toward the overall goal of the film’s narrative – helping them develop into slightly more functional versions of themselves.
The leading performances of Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman help anchor Paul Thomas Anderson’s combination love letter to the 1970s and coming-of-age tale to a place that is worthy of mention alongside the greats of cinema. On the other hand, the film’s central relationship carries some deeply problematic overtones regarding age differences between romantic partners, so it’s better to probably go into this one with a less-than-fully-open mind. If you’d like to check it out, though, you can currently stream it via Amazon Prime Video.
