Licorice Pizza 2021
Licorice Pizza has gotten a lot of acclaim and I was glad it was showing at my local AMC, since so many of the acclaimed movies never seem to show anywhere. I had no idea what it was about, though it turns out I had seen a preview for it. It doesn’t matter because it really isn’t about anything. It is set in California in the 1970’s. It is amazing how movies are able to recreate a time and place like this one does, and that may be its biggest accomplishment. Primarily it follows two characters. Gary is a high school student who has had small parts as a child actor, but is always on the lookout for a way to make a buck. He likes Alana, the other character, who is ten years older and kind of drifting, working as a photographer’s assistant early in the movie. It isn’t really a romance so much as it is just a rambling tour of a kind of seedy side of California as Gary tries out different flash-in-the-pan businesses like selling waterbeds and starting a pinball shop. It is based on the life of a friend of the director’s. Slice of life movies about teenagers usually have a bigger cast and more stories, so this movie seems a little empty. It is fun seeing some of the crazy stuff from that era, but without much happening it feels kind of like a film school project, maybe by a teenager so he could hire all of his friends as extras. By the time it was over I felt like, yeah, okay. Most of the people in the movie haven’t done much acting, but a few big stars show up, sometimes in tiny roles, because the director is Paul Thomas Anderson.
Written: 29 Dec 2021
Owned on: Digital