LICORICE PIZZA (B+) - Paul Thomas Anderson rights his comeback with another time travel back five decades, this time a sweet old-fashioned love story about an improbably odd couple. The charm of its two stars carries it far, despite the absence of a coherent full-length story.
The shaggy-dog L.A. story here -- reminiscent of 2015's "Inherent Vice" and Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" -- focuses on 15-year-old child actor Gary (Cooper Hoffman) and 25-year-old photography assistant Alana (pop star Alana Haim), who develop a mostly platonic arms-length relationship, mostly because she is wary of dating a child, despite the pimple-faced boy's suavity and worldly charms. Anderson places the pair in a series of escapades -- Gary, somehow, back in simpler times, has the means to open his own businesses, including a water-bed emporium -- and lets their energy buoy the screenplay for two-and-a-quarter hours.
Hoffman (the son of Anderson regular Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a natural as the glib Gary, and Haim (whose family plays her family here) makes an assured film debut as the self-doubting but eminently capable Alana. In one memorable scene, she captains a box truck that has run out of gas and maneuvers it backward down a winding hill and then coasts forward through traffic to a service station -- quite a feat of Anderson's camera crew, too. It's Haim's movie, for better and for worse; she snaps off putdowns and zingers, but she's also used as a sexist prop at times, at one point paraded around in a bikini and high heels while pining for a boy 10 years her junior.
Like Tarantino, Anderson here feels the need to drop in cameos of his friends camping it up as thinly veiled celebrities of the era; they contribute little to the movie and distract more than enlighten. He sends up Lucille Ball (Christine Ebersole), William Holden (Sean Penn) and, most effectively, Jon Peters, the horndog boyfriend of Barbra Streisand, a status Peters is quick to remind everyone of, even women he's trying to pick up. As Peters, Bradley Cooper steals the middle of the movie with his coked-up hilarity. And like in "Hollywood," Other dead-end distractions include John Michael Higgins as a racially insensitive owner of a Japanese restaurant and Benny Safdie as a closeted politician. Meantime, Anderson pays microscopic attention to period details, from the fashions to the AM-radio sound drops (along with a heavy-handed soundtrack).
But it's the meandering interactions between Gary and Alana that keep us bouncing along with the movie, trusting the filmmaker to guide us to a satisfying conclusion. Anderson certainly retains his quirks -- for some reason each of the main characters is filmed multiple times running through streets -- but the baggy storytelling fits the mood, like it did in "Inherent Vice," and there isn't the fussiness of the director's other period pieces, like "The Master." Anderson also works in extreme close-up often, with whole faces filling the screen at times, most notably Harriet Sansom Harris in a delectable scene as Gary's agent interviewing Alana for possible acting work.
"Licorice Pizza" (the title is never explained; just go with it) exists because Anderson had a particular vision -- and perhaps some old axes to grind from his adolescence. There's not much more to it, but it's funny, touching and entertaining, and that's enough.
BONUS TRACKS
A critical scene midway through the movie cements the innocence of the relationship between Alana and Gary, to the strains of Paul McCartney and Wings' plaintive "Let Me Roll It":
Every generation gets the Fleetwood Mac it deserves. Here are the Haim sisters going old school with "Oh, Well" and ripping it up:
THE LIST
"Licorice Pizza" was our traditional Christmas Day Mainstream Movie. It slots into the eighth spot among the 17 films we've scored at our annual holiday outing:
1. Up in the Air (2009)
2. Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004)
3. Dreamgirls (2006)
4. Charlie Wilson's War (2007)
5. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)
6. Little Women (2019)
7. The Fighter (2010)
8. Licorice Pizza (2021)
9. American Hustle (2013)
10. The Shape of Water (2017)
11. La La Land (2016)
12. The Wrestler (2008)
13. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
14. Young Adult (2011)
15. This Is 40 (2012)
16. Holmes & Watson (2018)
17. Into the Woods (2014)
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