Licorice Pizza (2021)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Licorice Pizza (2021) – P. T. Anderson

My first comment about Licorice Pizza was going to be that Paul Thomas Anderson has done a pretty good job of recreating 1973 Los Angeles, considering that he himself was only born in 1970.  But then I read the trivia on IMDb about the film which reveals an amazing number of interconnections between Anderson, the actors in the film, and elements of the plot. As the writer-director, it now seems clear that he’s created this tapestry from his own memories, knowledge, and experiences. No need to be aware of any of this to enjoy the film which follows its own internal logic and feels real in a way that many narratives about young love do not.  But for the record, Alana Haim is from the band Haim and her mother was Anderson’s elementary school art teacher (he later did some music videos for Haim). She plays the 25-year-old object-of-desire for 15-year-old Gary, who is played by Cooper Hoffman, son of the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a good mate of Anderson’s and star of many of his films. Apparently, Gary is based on another Hollywood figure from the 70s (Gary Goetzman, a producer now but previously a hustling kid, it seems) and so too are characters played by Sean Penn (channelling William Holden) and Tom Waits (channelling either John Huston or Sam Peckinpah). For some reason, Jon Peters (hairdresser and Hollywood producer, in a relationship with Streisand in ’73), played by Bradley Cooper, isn’t given a pseudonym – perhaps he doesn’t mind being portrayed as something of a psycho!  There are a lot of rabbit holes to follow if you want to: Anderson’s dad was an announcer on the Carol Burnett Show and there are some nods to that show and its cast here, there are references to a Clint Eastwood-directed film called Breezy and probably also to Taxi Driver. But again, none of this really matters because the love story itself feels genuine, full of the kind of wacky anecdotes and incidents that pepper your own life (especially in your teens and twenties). There’s an infectious joie-de-vivre here (sparked by a great use of period music) that makes this one of the best films in recent memory. Highly recommended!