I am among the many admirers of Paul Thomas Anderson, and had been sitting through all the carefully-calibrated buzz for Licorice Pizza in eager anticipation of seeing something marvelous. Alas, this is not his finest effort.
One "Once Upon A Time in Hollywood" was enough. Tarantino's elbow-in-the ribs unfurling of industry insider jokes was done with more flair. "Licorice Pizza" covers some of the same ground, minus the Manson murders and without performances that come close to matching Brad Pitt's virtuosity in "Once Upon a Time". Like Tarantino, Anderson focuses his tale on an implausible pairing of characters, in this case a precocious, overgrown teenage boy and a woman in her twenties who seems to have missed out on being a teenager and is, through her mostly platonic relationship with the boy, regressing, rather (she tells of her sisters) in ways that puzzle her (and us). Anderson, who can be masterful in getting you to believe in implausible characters and relationships, doesn't quite hit the mark here.
The two young stars are clearly talented. Playing Gary, Cooper Hoffman displays many of the physical attributes and much of the wonderfully understated talent of his great, lamented father Philip Seymour, and he will, I hope, soon find his way into parts with more subtlety and depth. Playing the role of Alana Haim, Alana Haim is, as the critics have all been pointing out, a real find, although including her real-life nuclear family as characters is probably a bit too much information, and has to have been constraining for her. And the ensuing overuse of Jewish in-jokes (especially one that is both unamusingly vulgar and far too obvious - something out of a cheap sitcom, not a film by a major director) seems to me gratuitous.
The pair wanders through a series of incidents that seem mostly to have been invented to give purpose-recruited big (or biggish) names some way to strut their stuff. Though there are some good laughs to be had, none of these make much sense or relate convincingly to one another. The fun made of early-seventies cultural accoutrements, from water beds to those glunky plastic in-flight headsets the airlines used to give out (not to mention the Salisbury steaks they once served) is all well-observed and funny for those of us who were there, though much of this must be merely amusingly puzzling for those who weren't.
So much of this, though, is just a bit too arch. It's sort of like going to a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta : you are being encouraged to laugh at things that might not, in fact, be all that funny to you, because other people, from a social or historical milieu to which you may not belong but to which you might aspire, would find them funny - coyly knowing references to long-vanished Victorian society in the case of G&S, or to the denizens and wannabes on the margins of Hollywood (or, indeed, to intra-Jewish humor) in this one . The sequences with Sean Penn and Tim Waits, or with James Kelly, derive from this dynamic, not from some organic connection to the film. Penn and Waits, stars in their ways, playing blow-hard, pathetic Hollywood has-beens? This viewer, at least, had the distinct sense of being patronized. And for the real-life equivalents of their characters, it is downright cruel. Rather than being asked to laugh with some measure of self-recognition (which is what real comedy is usually about), we are being invited to gawk at successful insiders satirizing their lessers, and to share in their self-congratulatory amusement while, in their own minds (I guess) poking fun at themselves.
Some of the best, and most unselfconscious, laughs derive from the doings of the film's actual teenagers - the kids among whom Gary lives, albeit (in size, attainments, and attributable age) as a Gulliver. Here, Anderson's gifts for off-base humor comes into its own and we at last encounter some credible characters, their doings most often captured fleetingly, in the margins of the frame or in quick takes. These off-center, offhand moments give the film what richness and substance it possesses, reminding us that Anderson can, in fact, be a great director. Can we hope that he'll put this one behind him and go back to giving us masterpieces like "The Master" or "There Will Be Blood"?
One "Once Upon A Time in Hollywood" was enough. Tarantino's elbow-in-the ribs unfurling of industry insider jokes was done with more flair. "Licorice Pizza" covers some of the same ground, minus the Manson murders and without performances that come close to matching Brad Pitt's virtuosity in "Once Upon a Time". Like Tarantino, Anderson focuses his tale on an implausible pairing of characters, in this case a precocious, overgrown teenage boy and a woman in her twenties who seems to have missed out on being a teenager and is, through her mostly platonic relationship with the boy, regressing, rather (she tells of her sisters) in ways that puzzle her (and us). Anderson, who can be masterful in getting you to believe in implausible characters and relationships, doesn't quite hit the mark here.
The two young stars are clearly talented. Playing Gary, Cooper Hoffman displays many of the physical attributes and much of the wonderfully understated talent of his great, lamented father Philip Seymour, and he will, I hope, soon find his way into parts with more subtlety and depth. Playing the role of Alana Haim, Alana Haim is, as the critics have all been pointing out, a real find, although including her real-life nuclear family as characters is probably a bit too much information, and has to have been constraining for her. And the ensuing overuse of Jewish in-jokes (especially one that is both unamusingly vulgar and far too obvious - something out of a cheap sitcom, not a film by a major director) seems to me gratuitous.
The pair wanders through a series of incidents that seem mostly to have been invented to give purpose-recruited big (or biggish) names some way to strut their stuff. Though there are some good laughs to be had, none of these make much sense or relate convincingly to one another. The fun made of early-seventies cultural accoutrements, from water beds to those glunky plastic in-flight headsets the airlines used to give out (not to mention the Salisbury steaks they once served) is all well-observed and funny for those of us who were there, though much of this must be merely amusingly puzzling for those who weren't.
So much of this, though, is just a bit too arch. It's sort of like going to a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta : you are being encouraged to laugh at things that might not, in fact, be all that funny to you, because other people, from a social or historical milieu to which you may not belong but to which you might aspire, would find them funny - coyly knowing references to long-vanished Victorian society in the case of G&S, or to the denizens and wannabes on the margins of Hollywood (or, indeed, to intra-Jewish humor) in this one . The sequences with Sean Penn and Tim Waits, or with James Kelly, derive from this dynamic, not from some organic connection to the film. Penn and Waits, stars in their ways, playing blow-hard, pathetic Hollywood has-beens? This viewer, at least, had the distinct sense of being patronized. And for the real-life equivalents of their characters, it is downright cruel. Rather than being asked to laugh with some measure of self-recognition (which is what real comedy is usually about), we are being invited to gawk at successful insiders satirizing their lessers, and to share in their self-congratulatory amusement while, in their own minds (I guess) poking fun at themselves.
Some of the best, and most unselfconscious, laughs derive from the doings of the film's actual teenagers - the kids among whom Gary lives, albeit (in size, attainments, and attributable age) as a Gulliver. Here, Anderson's gifts for off-base humor comes into its own and we at last encounter some credible characters, their doings most often captured fleetingly, in the margins of the frame or in quick takes. These off-center, offhand moments give the film what richness and substance it possesses, reminding us that Anderson can, in fact, be a great director. Can we hope that he'll put this one behind him and go back to giving us masterpieces like "The Master" or "There Will Be Blood"?