Licorice Pizza reviews

[Big Magilla]

It's a widely held belief that you have to read a book three times before you really know it. I've always maintained that the same thing applies to films.

You form an opinion when you've seen a film for the first time. The second time you either confirm your original opinion or see something in it that changes you first perception either for better or worse. The third time you balance the two perceptions if they differed.

That said, it's rare for me to completely reverse myself on a film and then to like it even more after reading the film's backstory as I did here.

[Sabin]

Big Magilla wrote
The first time I saw this I appreciated the central romance and found the relationship between the various kids endearing but found much of the storytelling too fantastical to believe. The second time I watched it on Saturday, I liked it a lot more but still found the situations involving real-life characters too out there to be believed. Then I read the film's trivia page on IMDb. and found that though that stuff was exaggerated, it really happened.

While I don't quite join you in all of your praise for Licorice Pizza, I'm glad that you like it more. I'm always heartened whenever anyone revisits a film that they previously disliked or weren't able to engage with and found more to love in it. It's a reminder of our capacity for change and some of my relationships with the films I hold dearest (like Rushmore) started out that way.

[Big Magilla]

So…my issue with the film? The astute among you will notice I said I went with it for an hour to an hour and a half -- but the film runs 2 ¼. At a certain point, it did lose me, and I can tell you exactly where: when the big-name celebrity cameos kicked in. The Sean Penn/Tom Waits segment started out fine, but went on a very long time, with me wondering most of the way 1) is Penn supposed to be William Holden or Steve McQueen? and 2) how is this related to our main storyline? The final moment of the scene did work (and presaged the film’s ending), but it did take me out of the flow. And then the Bradley Cooper chunk –- so highly praised by critics (Manohla Dargis said it was her favorite part of the film) –- just baffled me. I didn’t get why Jon Peters was ordering a waterbed, why he was such a dick, how the gang expected to get away with sabotaging Peters’ house…so the whole Keystone Kops chase that filled the next 15 minutes left me cold. I can mentally process that Alana’s heroic prowess behind the wheel does something to bring her relationship with Gary back into balance, but, while it was going on, it didn’t feel organic to the film I’d been watching.

Happily, the remainder of the film –- Alana’s political job and Gary’s new entrepreneurial scheme –- revived the film completely for me. I think this section of the movie is as strong as anything PTA has ever done: telling an enormous number of stories in the smallest of strokes. Just consider the events of that final night: Alana is seemingly intrigued by her fellow campaign-worker, but gets a seemingly more inviting call from the candidate, only to discover he only wants her for beard duty (with the sadness of the closet rendered delicately but piercingly in first the restaurant scene, then Alana’s walk home with the lover) –- all while Gary is opening his latest venture to visible success that clearly leaves him unsatisfied because he can't share it-– and then the race to find one another, which at first seems at cross-purposes, but climaxes in (the film’s motif) a running scene that ends up different from what we expect (followed by a maybe real/maybe fantasized sentence in voice-over that either fulfills or violates audience hopes). This was just a great sequence, and it closed the film out on a high.

The first time I saw this I appreciated the central romance and found the relationship between the various kids endearing but found much of the storytelling too fantastical to believe. The second time I watched it on Saturday, I liked it a lot more but still found the situations involving real-life characters too out there to be believed. Then I read the film's trivia page on IMDb. and found that though that stuff was exaggerated, it really happened.

Gary (Cooper Hoffman's character) was based on Anderson's friend, producer Gary Goetzman, who was a child actor in Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda albeit five years earlier than depicted in the film, making the spoofs of Ball and lecherous Tim Matheson all the more real.

The Sean Penn sequence does go on too long, but Penn as William Holden reciting whole dialogue from The Bridges at Toko-Ri to Alana and Sam Peckinpah (Tom Waits) was genius. The nonsense with the motorcycle was inspired by Evel Kneival, not Steve McQueen.

Goetzman really did sell a waterbed to Jon Peters who approved of the sequence in which he is spoofed by Bradley Cooper who knew him from his version of A Star Is Born on which Peters was a producer because he owned the rights from the Streisand version.

Joel Wachs, the politician Alana Haim is working for played by Benny Safdie, was a real-life politician although it was the Los Angeles City Council, not the L.A. Mayor's office, that he was running for in 1971. He won and held the position until 2002 when he resigned and moved to New York to head the Andy Warhol Foundation where they named a town square after him that same year. He's still active at 83.

Oh, and Alana Haim is the daughter of Anderson's former art teacher, whom he had a crush on as a kid. She actually did babysit13-year-old Cooper Hoffman one time when she was at Anderson's house when Cooper was visiting with his dad, Philip Seymour Hoffman. That's her mother playing her mother in the film along with her real-life father and sisters.

The ban on pinball in Los Angles is stated in the film as having occurred in 1939. It was actually 1942 after it had been banned in New York and other cities. It was reinstated in 1974.

[Sabin]

danfrank wrote
I LOVED the running. It was visually engaging in a very cinematic way, and I think it perfectly symbolized the pent-up youthful (and rather aimless) energy of the main characters. Vive la différence.

You're right. Just some of them. I felt like there was a slight over-reliance on it as a visual motif.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about this film since I watched it again. I can't decide exactly how much I love or like it, but I know I'm glad it exists and so far I'm enjoying different parts of it, viewing to viewing, and there aren't many films these days I can say that about.

[danfrank]

I wish I could edit out every scene of them running.

I LOVED the running. It was visually engaging in a very cinematic way, and I think it perfectly symbolized the pent-up youthful (and rather aimless) energy of the main characters. Vive la différence.

[Sabin]

I think I'm genetically prone to underrating coming of age stories on first glance. I couldn't stop finding things that annoyed me about Moonrise Kingdom on my first viewing either. There's a host of things that I wish were different about Licorice Pizza. It's too long. The second half remains the darndest thing. I wish I could edit out every scene of them running. And it really, really would've benefited from a tighter pace and clearer check-ins between the characters. But there's something so earnest in how it creates an entire universe of possibilities between Gary and Alana, all the highs and lows. I don't know if Licorice Pizza is a romantic comedy. Like Phantom Thread, it's a movie about two people trying to find each other (and themselves) over a restless span of time. It believes in love as a force that binds people together, and occasionally one is made aware of the fact that they've been ensconced by it but never both.

I should say that, I have nothing to say about this film half as illuminating as this review on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/laurenwilf/film/licorice-pizza/

Anyway, I was wrong. I have problems with it, some of the bits work better than others (this is a significant issue), I wish it was shot a little more like Boogie Nights than The Master, but it's good.

Every year, there are countless performances that are overlooked for Academy Award nominations. This year there were several that stung but none quite as much as Alana Haim. But I must confess that I underrated Cooper Hoffman's performance a bit on a first viewing. He's outstanding and as deserving of a Best Actor nomination as any of the nominees.

[danfrank]

There were definitely a few things in this film that didn’t work, but the parts that did work—including every scene where Haim and Hoffman interacted with each other—were just magical. There was just an aliveness here ensconced in just beautifully crafted cinema that totally captivated me. Besides all the great craftsmanship Anderson deserves praise for drawing such perfect and delightful performances from Haim and Hoffman. I can’t think of a recent film that used kid actors so wonderfully. And it made me laugh, a lot. I think a few edits (especially the overuse of cameos) could have made this a just about perfect film. I loved it.

[dws1982]

Absolutely hilarious how White now hates Spielberg now that Spielberg's reputation has shifted over the past decade or so. Also hilarious to think of a National Review reader checking out a Bruce LaBruce film based on his recommendation.

[Big Magilla]

Reads like a mixed review to me, albeit one leaning more on the positive side.

This is somewhat confirmed in his 2021 Better-Than list in which he finds Shoplifters of the World deeper than Licorice Pizza, but then finds Licorice Pizza's romance superior to The Worst Person in the World's cynicism.

[Sabin]

Wow. Armond White really likes a Paul Thomas Anderson movie.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/ ... y/#slide-1

[Mister Tee]

I saw the movie on Monday, and have delayed writing about it –- partly from a hectic schedule, but also because I have conflicting/complicated thoughts about it, and I wanted to be sure I was ready to articulate them. You may not think it possible, but I’m in significant agreement with both Sabin and flipp on this. Which isn’t that easy to explain, but I’ll give it a go.

I was in love with the movie from the very first scene. With all the things I admire about Paul Thomas Anderson, I’d never thought of dialogue writing as being his primary virtue –- but the lengthy opening exchange between Hoffman and Haim brought to mind that first Eisenberg/Mara scene in The Social Network; the one that felt like it clinched the screenplay Oscar right off the bat. I loved these two characters (and performers), and was ready to follow them anywhere. And, for the next hour/hour-and-a-half, that’s what I did: the narrative may have been looser than my classicist brain would normally prefer, but I never questioned where we were going, and I enjoyed every small detail of every scene: Hoffman’s audition (where it’s instantly visually clear he’s outgrown his age group); Haim’s disastrous seder; the hilarious scene with the agent obsessed with Haim’s nose; the frantic arrest, and the exhilarating escape; Haim’s two-piece discomfort during the water-bed store opening; the is-the-scene-going-to-turn-icky?-no-it’s-sweet moment with Hoffman and Haim alone together on the water-bed.

That last was a significant scene, because it underlined an essential fact about the film: whatever digressions the narrative might bring…however many new characters were introduced…the central focus was always this relationship: specifically, how these two people -- clearly simpatico but, by virtue of their age gap (and his minority), unable to become romantically involved – can find a way to be together without it tipping over into the inappropriate. Given they’re both in their high-hormonal years, this is a devilishly difficult balance to maintain. The earlier scene where Alana indulges Gary’s request to see her boobs creates a real rift between them –- the encounter leaves them both confused, and I’d argue much of the rest of the film is about them recovering their equilibrium post that uncomfortable moment. They go through many mood swings, and the narrative goes this way and that, but how these two are going to deal with their existential conflict (wanting one another but knowing a platonic relationship is their highest hope) is the film’s north star.

So…my issue with the film? The astute among you will notice I said I went with it for an hour to an hour and a half -- but the film runs 2 ¼. At a certain point, it did lose me, and I can tell you exactly where: when the big-name celebrity cameos kicked in. The Sean Penn/Tom Waits segment started out fine, but went on a very long time, with me wondering most of the way 1) is Penn supposed to be William Holden or Steve McQueen? and 2) how is this related to our main storyline? The final moment of the scene did work (and presaged the film’s ending), but it did take me out of the flow. And then the Bradley Cooper chunk –- so highly praised by critics (Manohla Dargis said it was her favorite part of the film) –- just baffled me. I didn’t get why Jon Peters was ordering a water-bed, why he was such a dick, how the gang expected to get away with sabotaging Peters’ house…so the whole Keystone Kops chase that filled the next 15 minutes left me cold. I can mentally process that Alana’s heroic prowess behind the wheel does something to bring her relationship with Gary back into balance, but, while it was going on, it didn’t feel organic to the film I’d been watching.

Happily, the remainder of the film –- Alana’s political job and Gary’s new entrepeneurial scheme –- revived the film completely for me. I think this section of the movie is as strong as anything PTA has ever done: telling an enormous number of stories in the smallest of strokes. Just consider the events of that final night: Alana is seemingly intrigued by her fellow campaign-worker, but gets a seemingly more inviting call from the candidate, only to discover he only wants her for beard duty (with the sadness of the closet rendered delicately but piercingly in first the restaurant scene, then Alana’s walk home with the lover) –- all while Gary is opening his latest venture to visible success that clearly leaves him unsatisfied because he can't share it-– and then the race to find one another, which at first seems at cross-purposes, but climaxes in (the film’s motif) a running scene that ends up different from what we expect (followed by a maybe real/maybe fantasized sentence in voice-over that either fulfills or violates audience hopes). This was just a great sequence, and it closed the film out on a high.

But I can’t just brush away that near-half-hour where the film lost me; it had me leaving the theatre somewhat frustrated – like sex that ended fine but didn’t crescendo quite like I’d wanted. I’m thinking I need to go back and see the film again. Some of you (Sabin, in particular) routinely see films multiple times, but I rarely do –- if a film hits the high note for me, I’m happy to simply remember it, rather than try to recapture the magic. Going back to a film is, for me, a specific act: seeing if, armed with knowledge of how the narrative will go, I can watch something to which I had a somewhat mixed reaction and have it cohere better the second time through. Because of how much I loved about the film, I think it’s an effort worth making. But I will acknowledge, this is not the ideal reaction to a film for which I had such high hopes. Phantom Thread also had its daunting aspects, but I didn’t need a second viewing to resolve anything; it all felt right, there in the theatre, and I’d have to rate it a greater achievement on that basis.

But I do look forward to seeing this again, because I’m sure a lot of things will strike me that I’m forgetting to mention now. Anderson is a meticulous artist, who works down to the smallest detail, and it’s a pleasure to savor each tiny touch. I'm sure I'll also be more cognizant of just how the two characters complete one another: he's 15 but has already outgrown his first career, while she's 20-something (depending which answer she gives) but has done nothing as yet; she's hyper-aware of the world around her, but he knows better how to function in it. I look forward to re-processing all this. Also, the movie is just funny; I was laughing pretty steadily throughout that first hour and a half, and I’ll be happy to be reminded of the many moments that caught me off guard (just one instance, John C. Reilly’s one-line Herman Munster). Oh, and I guess I should mention: Cooper Hoffman and (especially) Alana Haim are perfect here.

Great title, too, when you give it thought. Licorice and pizza: two flavors that sound like they’d never work together – just like our two main characters. Somehow, the combination wins us over.

[flipp525]

Thought I would put this in the right place:

I absolutely loved Licorice Pizza and I’m so excited to see such a great critical reception for it. Alana Haim really is a true find. She gives a star-making performance that feels completely real and genuine. I would love for her to make the final Oscar lineup. I wanted to stay with her character after the film ended and find out where she goes.

Copper Hoffman is perfect as the awkward child actor. He is game for just about anything in this movie and really sells it.

Bradley Cooper is very funny in it but that is such a teeny, tiny performance. If he won the Oscar (which I’ve actually seen some people predict), it would be on par with something like Jason Robards in Julia.

[Sabin]

Cristy Lemire and Alonso Duralde on Breakfast all Day (formerly What the Flick) just gave it 10/10 each. Lemire is not the great or most incisive critic in the world but she’s calling it the best film of the year. I had a hunch it might get the LAFCA award but that’s a very strong bellwether. Duralde says it’s up there for him. Every few days, the friend whom I saw the film with posts a screen grab of his letterboxd friends who have seen and rated the film. My score is always the lowest by a whole star. I’m at **1/2. The next is him and one of his friends with ***1/2.

At this point, I’m resigned to say that I’ve just underrated the thing. I’m not convinced I will like it more when I see it again although to be fair I enjoy every Paul Thomas Anderson film more when I see it again, so I don’t see why this would be different. I have a hard time imagining that I’ll love it. But I’ve clearly underrated it based on increasing consensus.

[gunnar]

Anderson has been really hit or miss for me. I thought that Phantom Thread was good and I liked Magnolia and Boogie Nights. I did not like There Will Be Blood or The Master. Inherent vice was okay and I don't really remember Punch-Drunk Love. I'm sure that I'll watch Licorice Pizza eventually, probably when it comes out on dvd.

[Sabin]

Mister Tee wrote
As for this part: If the film becomes central to the best picture race (which, right now, it seems to be: I'd say this, Power of the Dog, King Richard and Belfast are the core, with Don't Look Up, Nightmare Alley and, I suppose, West Side Story, lurking out there as gate-crashers),

Not a central part of the thread but because you mentioned it...

That's basically how I see it of the films that have been seen. Belfast, King Richard, and The Power of the Dog seem to have the most going for them. It seems just as likely that they all entertain as they all disappoint. The next tier would appear to be Spencer (it has enough fans), Licorice Pizza (it's quite weird but probably enough like it), The Tragedy of Macbeth (it's probably liked enough), and maybe Dune. It's a box office and sequel green-light marks it as a success story in an industry that's less reticent to honor science fiction.

That's seven right there.

That leaves room for some outliers, or rather what is perceived as an outlier at this point. Some combination of Being the Ricardos, C'mon C'mon, The Lost Daughter, and Tick Tick Boom. Early screenings for Being the Ricardos seemed enthusiastic. Aaron Sorkin is a bit hit or miss with the Academy. On the surface, it looks a bit more like Molly's Game/Steve Jobs than Social Network/Chicago 7.

Or that leaves room for Don't Look Up, Nightmare Alley, and West Side Story, none of which have been seen. There's certainly room for something to sneak in and suck up all the oxygen.

That also leaves room for a foreign language film to pick up some fans, Parallel Mothers, A Hero or The Worst Person in The World...

Not to invite your recurring line about cancelling the Academy Awards but this certainly doesn't look to be a race for the ages.