Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, a coming-of-age comedy starring Alana Haim, follows two young people in the 70s trying to find their key to success
Licorice Pizza is an irresistably charming comedy romp through the 70s through the eyes of two charismatic young people looking for an outlet for their energy.
Without fail the second a Paul Thomas Anderson movie ends I’m filled with an odd sense of sadness. Sadness that I won’t be able to hang out with his characters anymore. That I won’t be able to live in their world anymore. And yes, I even felt it with There Will Be Blood.
However, his newest film Licorice Pizza has more in common with Boogie Nights than much of his recent work — both are set in the 70s and feature a comedic cast of characters. But even that comparison isn’t perfect. Even in his lighter movies PTA often finds darkness in our existence. Licorice Pizza, however, is almost completely made of joy.
When Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) meets Alana Kane (Alana Haim, of the band Haim, in her film debut) it’s clear that they’ve each met their match. What Gary, who is a mature-seeming 15-year-old, and Alana, a lost 25-year-old, have in common is that they have too much energy and natural charisma without an outlet for it.
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Throughout the movie, people seem inexplicably drawn to them. In one of the more ridiculous scenes in a film full of them, an actor (Sean Penn) invites Alana for drinks after an audition where he spews nonsense about the Korean war and attempts a motorcycle stunt from one of his old movies — with Alana in tow… kind of. He suavely cheeks, “you remind me of Grace.” Referring to his former co-star Grace Kelly.
The rest of the movie is just a greatest hits reel of those scenes, each of which works on their own but especially as a study of two people experimenting with their lives until they find meaning. Plotless movies sometimes end up being a chore to get to, but this is Paul Thomas Anderson. He knows exactly what buttons to hit and when.
In recent years, PTA has been leaning into character studies about difficult men with complex plots that frankly challenge the viewer into sticking with it. Think The Master or Phantom Thread. So it’s a wonder that Licorice Pizza is simply a hangout movie made for an easy watching experience.
As Alana begins to find success in various places, the pure lunacy of each scene heightens. When Gary’s new scheme at success is selling water beds, Alana takes his note of being sexier on sales calls a little too literally. After purring into the phone and promising to come over to “personally install” the mattress she quips to Gary, “if you say you want it more sexy, I’ll make it f-cking horny.”
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Lines like that easily make this PTA’s funniest movie, perhaps even his first broad comedy. That makes it the perfect movie for his wife comedy legend Maya Rudolph to make her first appearance in. Even more fitting for her to welcome a comedy star in the making.
Alana Haim, who is making her film debut along with her sisters and bandmates Este and Danielle (and their parents), steals every single frame of the movie with her perfectly delivered one-liners — I haven’t laughed harder this year than when she screamed, “you’re a f-cking Jew!” — and her subtly expressive face that just oozes disappointment at Gary’s shenanigans.
Like Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Hollywood or Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some, Licorice Pizza is about faithfully recreating its time period. Not just the aesthetic, but the mood. The word transportive is used too often, but it really feels like PTA picks you up and drops you into this world where you can revel in the delight of hanging out for two hours. In that simplicity, PTA has found greatness.
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Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.
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Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.
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