LGM Film Club, Part 284: Licorice Pizza

Being a huge Paul Thomas Anderson admirer, I am surprised that I hadn’t yet seen Licorice Pizza, his film from last year. So I finally did last night.

The reviews of this were mostly positive because the filmmaking itself is so masterful, but with a lot of reservations because of the relationship. And yeah, I guess you have to get over the idea of a 25 year old woman and a 15 year old boy having a sort of platonic relationship. I think Anderson is trolling us a bit here–he seems to be the type of guy who thinks political correctness is a real thing and wants to make us uncomfortable. The worst part of the film–and it’s totally baffling–is the joke where the restaurant owner (John Michael Higgins, who you will recognize as the partner of Michael McKean in Best in Show) speaking a stereotype of a Japanese accent to his Japanese wives. It just makes no sense and it’s almost as if Anderson wants to challenge the audience in some dumb ways.

But the idea of a lost 25 year old woman and a 15 year old kid who is pretty precocious for his age having some kind of relationship isn’t that impossible. At what point is it impossible for people 10 years apart to have relationships? I guess when you are in your 40s, but I swear some of the discomfort with all this is that it’s an older woman and a younger man, though you couldn’t make a Manhattan-type film in 2021, and for good reason.

In any case, how you feel about that relationship is going to determine how you feel about the film. Well, that and the lack of any meaningful plot. Stuff happens, it’s amusing but not necessarily super consequential.

So yeah, it’s a minor film. But Anderson has ever right to have those given the major films he has directed, with There Will Be Blood one of my 10 favorite films of all time. What pulls this up from being truly minor though is Alana Haim, who is one hell of a great actor. She just shines though this film with very real Movie Star intensity. I know she’s mostly a singer with her sisters but I hope she gets some plum acting parts because she is Academy Award worthy in this film. She just has That Thing. As for Cooper Hoffman, well, casting the son of Anderson’s previous favorite might sound nice and he’s alright, but he can’t carry a film. Haim can.

Also, I would absolutely pay for the spinoff film of Sean Penn playing William Holden and Tom Waits playing Mark Robson.