MOVIE REVIEW
“LICORICE PIZZA”
Rated R. At the Coolidge Corner Theatre and Landmark Kendall Square.
Grade: B
Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s least commercial fictional film, “Licorice Pizza,” the name of a former record store chain with a devoted following in Southern California, is a lot of California-dreaming-style, uneventful naval-gazing.
The film is a coming-of-age romance set in the San Fernando Valley in the 1970s. Somehow, 15-year-old child actor Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) gets a 25-year-old photographer’s assistant named Alana Kane (actor-musician Alana Haim) to go out with him on a date. Let’s just ignore the age difference, right?
Well, anyway, the romance of Gary and Alana plays at first to the tune of Bing Crosby. Gary is hardly an ideal romantic partner. His lack of a driver’s license in L.A. is a bit of a deal breaker. Getting around on a bicycle is not possible without the aid of public transportation, I can assure you from personal experience.
A lot of the visual (and audio) romping around recalls such ’60s and ’70s shows as “The Monkees,” which was much more experimental than you might recall. In addition to soundtrack music by former Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, the romance of Gary and Alana is accompanied by David Bowie (“Life on Mars”?), Paul McCartney and Wings (“Let Me Roll It”) and The Doors (“Peace Frog”), Nina Simone (“July Tree”) and others.
Alana gets a job with a political campaign (shades of “Taxi Driver’s” Cybill Shepherd), and she is hit upon by several, toxic-seeming men closer to her age, one played by Bennie Safdie. Does Alana see a less-threatening romance without sex in the underage Gary?
The San Fernando Valley, where Anderson grew up the son of American radio and television personality Ernie Anderson, has never looked more like a sun-drenched playground (Anderson’s production company Ghoulardi Film Company takes its name from his father’s 1960s horror TV show host’s alias). Alana’s Orthodox Jewish family are all played by members of Haim’s real family. On this level, “Licorice Pizza” is an unashamed celebration of Hollywood nepotism (yes, that is Sasha Spielberg as Cindy).
Bradley Cooper pops up in a show-stopper (I don’t mean that in a necessarily good way) as the real-life coked-to-the-gills, Barbra Streisand hair-dresser-turned-suitor and film producer Jon Peters. Later, Sean Penn will turn up as an old-fashioned Hollywood hell-raising movie star on a (phony) motorcycle and on the make for Alana. Quentin Tarantino did a more memorable turn on the crazy house of mirrors aspect of Tinseltown in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
Hoffman is likable as fun-loving Gary. But his work reminded me of Michael Gandolfini in “The Many Saints of Newark.” Do these biological casting choices make any real sense? It makes as much sense as the waterbeds Gary sells.
Anderson, who has directed Haim in music videos for her band of sisters, has visited the Valley before in his films, most notably “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia.” On the whole, the shaggy and episodic “Licorice Pizza” is more a choice, audio-visual mixtape than movie.
(“Licorice Pizza” contains profanity, suggestive content and drug use.)
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