Friday, 11 February 2022

Licorice Pizza (2021), directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

The title probably says it all about this very strange film. Budding entrepreneur Gary Valentine is 15 and abounds with self-confidence. Alana Kane is 25-ish, directionless in a dead-end job. Their unlikely love story develops through a series of business opportunities and misadventures in early 1970s California. The film expounds some interesting themes along the lines of knowing yourself and discovering what you want – and don’t want, especially for Alana, but it really drags in places and there are many inexplicable shots of the leads running. Musician Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman are very good in debut performances. complemented by a fabulous soundtrack. But too much time is spent on the misadventures, which feature some truly bizarre cameos from the likes of Bradley Cooper, Tom Waits and Sean Penn in vignettes that smack of self-indulgent Hollywood in jokes. It is not surprising that the lead performances have been nominated in the upcoming awards season, but the film itself – really? A weird combination that sounds cool, but is actually just odd. It really is all in the name.

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