**** off, teenagers!
With Licorice Pizza, Paul Thomas Anderson has turned in one of his more flawed and even problematic films. This isn’t to say that it’s bad overall; I certainly think there are sequences in it that are nothing short of great, a lot of excellent performances and, naturally, a fantastic soundtrack of pitch perfect songs. I’m going to start with the main positives, because those positives will lead quite naturally into the the biggest negative for me, which will also necessitate some spoiler-talk. But I’ll give you a heads up before I spoil much of anything.
The film is a meticulously crafted recreation of the 1973 San Fernando Valley. Amidst the beautiful production design, costuming and hair, the film is the story of Gary Valentine, a fifteen-year-old actor/hustler, and his on-again/off-again friendship/romance with Alana Kane, a twenty-five year old woman at loose ends. In those main roles, Cooper Hoffman, son of the late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Alana Haim, of the fantastic pop-rock group Haim, are both really excellent. Both of the young actors are making their feature film debuts here, which makes their naturalistic ease in front of the camera and their ability to communicate their charisma even more compelling. There’s a lot of fun to be had with the supporting cast as well. I wasn’t aware going in that Alana Haim’s sisters, Danielle & Este, the other two members of Haim, were going to be in the film, so it was a delight to see them show up briefly as Alana’s in-movie sisters. The real parents of the Haim sisters play their parents as well and the family scenes are among the funniest in the film. Sean Penn, who I haven’t seen in ages, turns up as a sleazy actor (what a stretch!) and every single syllable is exactly right. Benny Safdie is good as real life 70s politician Joel Wachs and an actor I’m not familiar with, Skylar Gisondo, is absolutely scene-stealing in his small role. And the best scene in the film by a mile features legendary character actress Harriet Harris as a deranged talent agent; for an ostensible comedy, this movie didn’t make me laugh very much, but Harris’ two or three minutes on screen absolutely had me rolling.
There were, oddly for a PTA film, a couple of performances I didn’t much like. Most notably, I think Bradley Cooper’s performance here is not good at all. I understand that he’s purposely playing over the top and I have no doubt that this is the performance both he and PTA wanted for the film, but I think he went too far and I found him an annoying presence. The PTA movie this movie reminded me the most of is Inherent Vice, a movie that actually accomplishes a lot of things this movie goes for but fails at; anyway, I couldn’t help but think of how much better Martin Short was in Inherent Vice as essentially the same character. I also really didn’t enjoy Tom Waits’ character in the movie; I don’t know that his performance is bad, but I really just wish that character didn’t even exist, because he has nothing to do and serves no real purpose. This kind of leads into one of my two main criticisms which is that the film is simply too long at two-hours-fifteen. There’s just a lot here that really doesn’t work and isn’t valuable enough to make the cut in my opinion. A bizarre detour that involves Gary being arrested and accused of a crime is just silly. And look, I don’t really have any affinity for the “depiction = endorsement” mindset that has lead some people to attack the racist character played by John Michael Higgins. I think the problems with that character are far more fundamental; the problem isn’t that he’s racist, the problem is kind of just that he’s there at all, since he’s not funny and also serves no plot purpose.
But there’s a lot of interesting thematic material here. About forty-five minutes in or so, I was kind of struggling to see the film as anything more than a kind of lark, but things started to click for me at a certain point and I think the film really is about one of PTA’s perennial themes: toxic masculinity. I really do think Cooper Hoffman is fantastic as Gary; he’s affable and charming and naturalistic, but he’s able to handle the turn when the movie makes it. He has one thing in common with his late father already, which is their shared ability to portray the negative sides of a character without compromising for audience sympathy or “likability.” I think as the film progresses, we get to see the toxic side of Gary’s personality reveal itself and I guess we should go into spoiler mode at this point.
One of the best sequences in the film is the scene where Alana and Gary run out of gas and are forced to coast their large delivery truck down a very long and winding downhill road. It’s a beautifully shot scene, emphasizing the quietness of the truck once the engine has gone silent. It’s a fantastic scene because it’s super-cool, but also because of what it reveals about the characters. In the aftermath of the ride, Alana is emotionally exhausted by the near disasters that she’s averted; Gary on the other hand is simply exhilarated and as Alana wearily watches Gary miming sex with one his friends, using a gas can nozzle as a stand-in for his penise, you feel the years between them finally setting in.
But I think it is ultimately more than just the years between them. I think the point of the Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper characters is the way that they demonstrate that there is a certain kind of toxic immaturity that some men simply never outgrow. Part of the weariness in Alana’s face as she watches Gary from the curb is her understanding that Gary is never going to change. And then there’s that fantastic break-up scene with Gary refusing to admit to the very basic premise that he isn’t the most important person in the world. By the time that scene is over, I was all in on Gary essentially being a sociopath.
Which is why I have such a problem with the end of the movie where Gary and Alana get back together. I wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with it in story terms; the problem is that the movie treats it in a very romantic way which I just found annoying and kind of insulting even. At the end of the day, I think maybe Hoffman’s performance was too good; his performance is good enough that I just don’t feel there’s room for redemption at the end and, by the way, the movie doesn’t even really try to depict a redemptive moment. He goes after Alana to get her back for purely selfish reasons in my opinion. I don’t know, I just found myself having an argument with this movie for the rest of the day after I saw it. And, look, PTA’s a filmmaker with such a strong artistic vision that I’ve considered that the romantic treatment of the ending might actually be ironic; maybe the reaction I’m having is the reaction he wanted. I don’t know; I just know that I have seen people talking about Gary and Alana as a genuinely romantic story and I don’t buy that at all.
Still, for all its flaws, Licorice Pizza is a movie very much worth watching. There’s a lot of real excellence here, as there always is with PTA, and while it’s heavily leavened with a lot of not-so-excellent material, it is a movie that’s up to things. It has some ideas and you’ll walk out of the movie wanting to talk about it and think about it. You’ll have a strong opinion. And, if we’re putting this movie in the context of the Best Picture nominees this year, I’ll take a mixed reaction to an interesting movie over a mostly positive reaction to a completely uninteresting one, if you know what I mean. Anyway, Licorice Pizza isn’t up to PTA’s usual standards, but it’s a movie worth experiencing. 3 stars.
tl;dr – overlong, occasionally problematic and too meandering, Licorice Pizza still offers up enough greatness to be worth a watch; some great scenes & great performances offset the missteps. 3 stars.