Rent Licorice Pizza (2021)

Brain-sapping tedium - Licorice Pizza review by Alphaville

The trailer guys had a brilliant idea. Given that there’s nothing in the film itself to grab the viewer, let’s fast-edit clips to a soundtrack of Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’ to at least make it sound interesting. Now imagine that trailer drawn out to 128mins without a Bowie score and you have just another long tedious coming-of-age teenage romance set in the 1970s.

The choice of soundtrack songs is dreadful. Well done if you can even get past the cheesy opening meeting set to a vomit-inducing ditty. It’s the kind of film that might eventually find a slot as slow afternoon fare on some obscure TV channel. A ‘timeless story’ trumpets the DVD blurb. Ironically… if for some unfathomable reason you decide to stick with it… you’ll be checking the clock to see how much longer you have to endure it.

Plenty to like but increasingly wearing - Licorice Pizza review by PD

There's plenty to like in this bewildering, highly original film, but the basic problem for me is the distinct lack of chemistry between Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Alana Kane (Alana Haim), which for me means that the sections where they're at each others' throats are a lot more convincing than any romantic connection. They're very good on their own terms - Hoffman's Gary is a successful child actor, who has wielded his limited “fame” with confidence far beyond his years, and he’s got a lot of alpha energy from having to navigate the egos of aging Hollywood stars and a revolving door of casting agents. It’s in this space that he declares to his younger brother, on the same day as meeting her, that he’s going to marry Alana someday - it's not a little creepy, but I guess that's the point. Alana meanwhile is the youngest daughter of a restrictive ex-Israeli soldier; there’s a seething anger just below the surface of all her interactions, impatient with her lot in life and the straight paths she’s uninterested in taking to achieve her goals of wealth and attention. Gary is the road not taken, the one that she knows she shouldn’t pursue but one she flagrantly does, putting her toe in, and then taking it out, for the entire length of the film.

As the two aggressively flirt and make one another jealous, Gary envelops Alana into his scattershot existence, first as his adult chaperone on his press tour trip to New York City, and then in a series of opportunistic business ventures in the Valley. Be it ahead of the trend — waterbeds, acting gigs, pinball houses, you name it — when Gary puts his eye on it, he’s immediately successful at it. Their seemingly random ventures (which apparently are all based on the real exploits of former child actor Gary Goetzman) carry Gary, Alana, and a small posse of young enablers across a summer in the Valley running breathlessly from one scheme to the next. In all the crisscrossing, Anderson does capture the time, 1973, remarkably well (I was there too, so I know), with faces shot au natural and close up so every imperfection is captured, bringing an delightfully incongruous sense of realism to all the surrealism on show. From Sean Penn and Tom Waits’ aging Hollywood alpha males setting up impromptu motorcycle jumps on a golf course to a bizarre evening with Bradley Cooper’s over-sexed Jon Peter’s buying a waterbed, you never quite know what's going to happen next.

But for me it all gets to be too much about halfway (it's long, and it felt like it). Gary and Alana's teasing and baiting, hurting then almost ferally defending one another goes from intriguing and hilarious to predictable and wearing - for while Alana does occasionally vocally question the weirdness of her spending so much time with a boy like Gary, the film isn’t interested in seeing either of them develop - in fact, Anderson seems most interested in just watching them repel and attract each other ad nauseum as they navigate their way amongst a never-ending line-up of truly awful people. You can see what Anderson is trying to do - get us to root for a messed-up dynamic because it’s so skilfully framed like a Hollywood ending, but for me I was ultimately rather glad to be released.

Don't like licorice but love pizzas. This could be the film for you either way. - Licorice Pizza review by Strovey

The western world as we call it and in particular the USA and the UK are currently in the middle of a mawkish, naval gazing, nostalgia-fest. It is therefore completely understandable that art and in particular storytellers on the screen, both big and small, reflect this.

This time we step back into the seventies with distinctive and talented director Paul Thomas Anderson much in the same vein as Tarantino but without the dark and unpleasant streak that runs through his work. Anderson here has a lighter touch with a sense of fun and verve that only comes with the young who are not really sure about themselves or their direction in life.

Apparently drawing on the real-life stories of producer and sometime actor Gary Goetzman it is immediately striking that in general Anderson’s two main protagonists Gary and Alana are more confident and purposeful than many young lover types in this genre of films. It makes a refreshing change as, the spookily like his dad the much-missed Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cooper Hoffman, takes to the role convincingly in his big screen debut. Cheeky, full of confidence, and some swagger, this type of young character could be tremendously annoying in the wrong hands, in writing, directing and acting, but to everyone’s credit he is as likable as he is daft. No one is frightened of showing his jealousy and anger, not great characteristics in anyone, but to my mind, it balances him out as a normal if a little pushy human being.

Likewise, Alana, played by Alana Haim, apparently, a successful pop musician with her sisters is sketched out as a confident strong young woman who still shows weaknesses in her character by having her head turned by smarmy actors or getting unreasonably jealous of someone who ‘isn’t her boyfriend’ but this never diminishes her character. You feel, or indeed know, by the film's conclusion she will be okay.

Populate your film with accomplished actors in cameos, such as standouts Sean Penn as Jack ‘not William’ Holden and Tom Waits as Rex ‘not John Huston’ Blau and you have typical PTA fare.

The seventies are recreated in both the presentation and the looks in set design and clothing, as someone from that ear, albeit in the UK I admit, I would say that the folk involved in this should take a bow. Never once did I think – this is them pretending, it was the 1970s for me.

I never read other people’s reviews of films I have just watched until I have at least watched the film, and often after I have written my piece, but in this case, I did read some almost immediately after viewing. Why? Because I just knew most people would say ‘it doesn’t do anything’ or ‘there’s no story’ and on the whole I was completely correct.

For me that is the entire point, it is the film’s strong point. No one in this film, looks or behaves like an actor playing a role, looks perfect or has great hair, except the people playing film stars. To me the whole Rom Com conceit is laid low here, it is never easy or even fully clear cut and there is no story, just hundreds of little ones that add up and make your life. You can stop anywhere you want, your viewing stops, and the story goes on. Perfect for me.

The age difference between Hoffman’s and Hiam’s characters could be problematical if you are looking for something to really pick at, he being fifteen and Alana 25 and if it were reversed, a 15-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man – yikes, but Alana does question it, try to change and move away and at no point is it creepy. My wife is 12 years older than me but it has to be said we did not meet when I was at school.

Overall Licorice Pizza is a slice out of two people’s lives in their formative years. Neither cynical nor lyrical it sits in just the right place for me. I can see why some would baulk at the ‘romance’ between the two characters and the lack of narrative drive but the overall film pushes these concerns to the back for me.

It is entertaining fun.