Movie Review: Licorice Pizza Shows Growing Up Requires Adults
Period pieces are a weird thing, especially in 2021/2022. On one hand, we get frustrated at how they portray things like, sexism, racism, and classism by going the “Green Book” route, and trying to make them something that happened but nothing a New York chauffeur can’t stop on a pizza run, or they hammer it into the movie to make every cinematic breathe traumatizing and heavy. There is rare balance between acknowledging pain/historical trauma and the ways we heal it, which I wonder if why it is never struck stems from the fact that it is rarely healed or shown. In some ways, that is why Licorice Pizza, by Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA), was fascinating. It was a period piece, set during the 70’s, on dislikable characters influencing a likable kid.
Out December 24, Cooper Hoffman’s Gary endeared me because he embodied how a kid’s flaws can get him drawn into a world of VERY FLAWED adults. Watching him get lost with exuberant losers felt slightly relatable because we all have, at least once, befriended absolute jerks, crazies, and people filled with life but no purpose. I will one up you and say I have dated them. SO…. HA! Hoffman offers a performance that reminded me of the many times, especially in my teens, where I thought the worst person was the best one by confusing confidence as goodness or, automatically, assumed their older age meant a wealth of wisdom. Unwrapping the people around you to see how they reflect the parts of you that you are not looking at is, in some ways, why Alana Haim’s Kane shines as an actress capable of embodying and charming through a frustrating character.
Often, when I see men dating much younger women, I note that it either means she is super mature or he is super immature. It is usually the latter. The 10 year age gap between 15 year old Gary and 25 year old Alana is 100% creepy, and totally marks my last statement while switching the genders. Alana is supposed to be in a totally different place in her life, one that is more “successful,” but like for many twenty-somethings, the idea that you are supposed to be an adult and have things figured out is so bombarding, false, and even cruel. This totally reflects in her relationships with either much older men like, Sean Penn’s movie star Jack Holden or Benny Sadie’s mayoral candidate Joel Wachs, or her seduction of underage actors like, Skyler Gisondo’s Lance and Gary, himself. As writer and director, PTA sees them as interchangeable dynamics: portraying both as mutual scenes of a young woman trying, in all the wrong ways, to grab power and emotional stability from boys that see her as either a goddess or the girl at a bar. In essence, she’s always with “boys,” no matter what age, and relishes Gary’s boyish adulation and kind treatment as true, mature love.
As I saw Kane fall for Gary, I was skeeved but unsurprised because Haim does well to show that beneath that shroud of “fearless” Gary exalts lies a lost girl who can be mean and selfish if someone finds her. That “hidden mean”/ “frustrated dreamer” attracts Gary because he is a “child actor” that has been turned geriatric by the Hollywood industry, has more get-rich schemes than a hustler uncle, and finds friendships with deranged celebrity hairdressers, Bradly Cooper’s Jon Peters, oddly anchoring and solid. Cooper is INSANELY FUNNY and detestable as Jon, but marks a running theme throughout the film or, shall I say, “tragic question:”When do you actually come of age?
On surface, Licorice Pizza is the tale of an age-inappropriate romance that is absolutely doomed beyond the end credits and takes place in a time-period where over-sexualizing Asian women through public grunts and gyrations was deemed “flirting.” (BTW, THAT GROSSNESS STILL HAPPENS!) Yet, that is the point. In a world, where wrong is deemed cute, where hurt teenagers grow to become hurting adults, and where riches and fame, or the dreams for it, delude people into believing their own lies, when does growing up actually happen? Even though Gary, is hilariously and sadly “old manned” by surrounding adults because he has goals and plans, which, ironically, they don’t, his connecting vulnerability with Kane, for better or worse, stems on how they feel stunted by what it means to be “older.” Hence, through the strangeness and laughs of Licorice Pizza, you wonder who Gary would grow up to be, as an adult, when he never could find one.
