Licorice Pizza is a movie that’s been in release since last November and recently racked up three Oscar nominations. Don’t look to me to explain the title because even I don’t understand it.
What I do understand is that writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson has crafted another winner that fans of his will enjoy.
The movie takes place in the San Fernando Valley in 1973 and it centers around a high school student named Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) who meets an older woman named Alana Kane (Alana Haim) and immediately falls for her. She doesn’t reciprocate due to their 10 year age difference.
However, Gary persists and eventually gets Alana to have dinner with him. Their relationship blossoms and she confides in him that she wants to try acting. Gary himself has acting experience and tries to hook her up with an agent to get her career started. In the meantime, they also become partners and open a waterbed business.
If you think this plot is sorta Seinfeld-esque, well, you might be right.
Sean Penn costars as an actor who strikes up a working relationship with Alana and after a night out, he convinces her to jump on the back of his motorcycle so he can recreate a stunt from one of his movies.
Bradley Cooper also costars as real-life producer Jon Peters, who’s depicted as a hot-tempered, controlling guy who orders a waterbed from Gary. Cooper’s performance albeit brief is a high point in the movie and he gets very perturbed when Gary mispronounces Barbra Streisand’s name.
From Boogie Nights to Magnolia to There Will Be Blood, Anderson manages to develop characters that may or may not be good people, but he makes them three-dimensional regardless. Licorice Pizza is no exception.
I think the movie is a prime example of a screenplay that’s concocted not to necessarily tell a story in the conventional sense, but rather to give us a unique insight into the lives of these people and explore their tastes, tendencies, insecurities, and ultimately their payoffs.
The movie is really made up of a series of individual moments that have a lot of wit and charm instead of relying on a script set to autopilot and that merely pushes the plot ahead.
Plus, Anderson wonderfully recreates the look, moods, and trends of the early ’70s, and Haim and Hoffman seem to really be engaged with their roles.
Licorice Pizza might baffle some audiences with its title, but Anderson’s fans will be happy to take another joyride.
Grade: A-
(Rated R for language, sexual material, and some drug use.)
