Paul Thomas Anderson takes an episodic look at life in California in the early 1970s.
It is through the lens of two young people. Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) is a mature and cocky 15 year old child actor.
He charms 25 year old Alana (Alana Haim) who is on the high school campus helping with the yearbook photos.
Gary asks Alana out and to his surprise she shows up albeit reluctantly.
Later Alana is a chaperone for Gary as he promotes the latest production he is appearing in with the rest of the cast. However Gary is aware that his time as an actor is nearing its end.
Soon he launches a new enterprise, selling water beds and Alana helps out.
As time goes on both mature and grow, but they also drift in and out of each other's lives.
Gary strikes up a relationship with someone of a similar age to him. Alana takes a stab at acting and his wooed by an older actor. Later she is enamoured with a local politician.
Licorice Pizza is named after a now defunct record store in Los Angeles. It mixes real people with some thinly disguised personalities.
Both Hoffman and Haim give agreeable performances, that looks naturalistic. There are cameos from Sean Penn as the older actor and Bradley Cooper as real life celebrity hairdresser turn film producer Jon Peters.
The sporadic nature of the script and that it is too long also means it is unfocus. You can sense Gary is a driven young man. As a 15 year old he is treated like an adult by others even though at times he can be immature with his friends. He is always looking for his next gig, after waterbeds, it is pinball machines as Gary opens an arcade.
I never grasped why Alana initially warmed to him. There are hints that her life is going nowhere in both career and romance. She is actually 28 years old, living with her controlling family.
However being with Gary brings out her personality and allows Alana to experience different facets of life. There is a scene where she reverses a truck with no petrol downhill a twisty road.
The relationship is mainly chaste given the age difference. As the years go by, both characters realise that they want each other.
It is a slice of the time, meandering feelgood movie. It is not that comic or dramatic though.
It is through the lens of two young people. Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) is a mature and cocky 15 year old child actor.
He charms 25 year old Alana (Alana Haim) who is on the high school campus helping with the yearbook photos.
Gary asks Alana out and to his surprise she shows up albeit reluctantly.
Later Alana is a chaperone for Gary as he promotes the latest production he is appearing in with the rest of the cast. However Gary is aware that his time as an actor is nearing its end.
Soon he launches a new enterprise, selling water beds and Alana helps out.
As time goes on both mature and grow, but they also drift in and out of each other's lives.
Gary strikes up a relationship with someone of a similar age to him. Alana takes a stab at acting and his wooed by an older actor. Later she is enamoured with a local politician.
Licorice Pizza is named after a now defunct record store in Los Angeles. It mixes real people with some thinly disguised personalities.
Both Hoffman and Haim give agreeable performances, that looks naturalistic. There are cameos from Sean Penn as the older actor and Bradley Cooper as real life celebrity hairdresser turn film producer Jon Peters.
The sporadic nature of the script and that it is too long also means it is unfocus. You can sense Gary is a driven young man. As a 15 year old he is treated like an adult by others even though at times he can be immature with his friends. He is always looking for his next gig, after waterbeds, it is pinball machines as Gary opens an arcade.
I never grasped why Alana initially warmed to him. There are hints that her life is going nowhere in both career and romance. She is actually 28 years old, living with her controlling family.
However being with Gary brings out her personality and allows Alana to experience different facets of life. There is a scene where she reverses a truck with no petrol downhill a twisty road.
The relationship is mainly chaste given the age difference. As the years go by, both characters realise that they want each other.
It is a slice of the time, meandering feelgood movie. It is not that comic or dramatic though.