I am usually an easy mark for Paul Thomas Anderson movies. He makes amazing movies that I tend to love, thanks to his technique often being accompanied by great performances from the people he casts in main roles. Licorice Pizza still has his technique on display, but the strangely unsatisfying script isn’t helped by young leads who aren’t up to the usual high standard of acting seen in other Anderson works. Also, to be flippant, this feels like a Richard Linklater film directed by a stand-in.
Cooper Hoffman plays Gary, a child actor who is struggling to find the right roles now he is an older teen. He can no longer get away with the cheeky antics he used to, he can no longer get by on cute and adorable, but he cannot just go back to a normal life. So he spends his time being an entrepreneurial businessman, looking to profit from whatever the latest fad might be, from water beds to videogames and pinball. Gary also, from the very start of the film, falls for the older Alana (played by Alana Haim). In her mid-20s, Alana scoffs at the idea of a relationship with Gary, but he’s certainly interesting and charismatic enough to make her interested in his life. And so begins a friendship that may or may not develop into something more.
Part period piece, part ode to the bittersweet intensity of that first BIG crush, Licorice Pizza isn’t a film to dismiss. I don’t think I would ever say that about any film from Anderson. It is, however, his least interesting and least successful work to date (in terms of translating ideas from script to screen).
Taking on his usual writer-director role, Anderson can at least be thankful for the talented people he works with. The production design here is wonderful, as expected. The wardrobe and make up departments do equally good work. The biggest problems here stem from the script and the casting.
Hoffman is great in his role, giving a performance that shows him as an actor who could easily follow in the daunting footsteps of his late father. Haim isn’t so good. I am not sure how much of that is down to her and how much of that is down to the script, with that age gap making things inherently a bit odd and icky, so I won’t spend too much time complaining about her. Bradley Cooper and Sean Penn, on the other hand, can both take some extra criticism. They clearly saw that they could have some fun with their roles, but both of them quickly teeter too far over into performances that are too silly. This may have been in service to the material, but neither of their performances fit well in a movie that otherwise wrings humour from a nice selection of references, time stamps, and winks to viewers, although let’s just not mention the scenes featuring John Michael Higgins. Mainly because I cannot decide on whether they are awful or amazing. The other person worth mentioning is Mary Elizabeth Ellis, very good in her small amount of screentime as the mother of Gary.
I have seen a lot of love for this, and some fans of Anderson rank it just as highly as some of his other works (and, in my view, he has delivered more than one cinematic masterpiece already, with a number of other movies from him coming very close to that status). It just didn’t work for me. Many of the performances worked against the better elements, and the better elements felt like moments I could find in other, more enjoyable, movies. This isn’t one I think I will ever want to revisit, which is the first time I have said that about any Paul Thomas Anderson movie.
5/10
If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
No comments:
Post a Comment