From it’s whimsical name to it’s awkwardly stylish mise en scène, Licorice Pizza should feel like a sweet and poignant dip into growing up in the 70s. Then why does it feel so creepy?
Gary (Cooper Hoffman, son of the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a smooth talking hustler trapped in the body of a pimply 15 year-old. A child actor, puberty has hit him hard and he bounces from one scheme to another, never seeming to need to go to school or be supervised by parents. Alana (Alana Haim) is one of his projects. Ten years older than him, she likes his spark but clearly rebuffs his creepy (if he wasn’t such a puppy dog) relentless pursuit.
It seems to be a film about Gary, although we dip in and out of Alana’s much more interesting life. She’s searching for direction but has a dogged determination that sees her game for anything.
There are some great set pieces and very tongue-in-cheek cameos – Bradley Cooper seems to think it’s quite a different movie in his manic portrayal of a floppy shirt wearing egotist. But really the narrative arc never seems to be Alana‘s. She is buffeted around by some awful men who, I think, we are supposed to find laughably endearing or benignly ridiculous. I suspect Gary is not supposed to be one of them but he seems as self-absorbed as the rest.
There are some odd subplots – the ‘honest’ congressman, Gary’s arrest, interchangeable Japanese wives – and micro details of the time but in the end it felt like another self-indulgent director elevating his childhood and personal interest into art. I read an apt review (that I can’t now find) that said it was the movie an adolescent boy might write about himself who then grew up and was given the money to make a proper film and cast real actors and made it verbatim without changing a word of it.
Hoffman has the pugnacious charisma of his father and I am sure will continue to make films. Haim is the stand out though, and with her sisters (co-stars in their band Haim) and parents playing her family, she is a natural. It is director Paul Thomas Anderson’s loss that he didn’t allow Alana to break free and use her Krav Maga and chutzpah to change the world.
Have you seen this film? Let me know your thoughts.
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