At some point, every adult has dreamed of returning to the place they grew up at the time they grew up there. Filmmakers are the only ones in a position to manifest that dream into a partial reality. There’s a long tradition of directors creating vivid reconstructions of the places where they came of age. Cinematic hometown love letters occasionally have the power to break their creators into the Hollywood mainstream, as George Lucas and Greta Gerwig each demonstrated with their respective odes to ‘60s Modesto and ‘00s Sacramento, American Graffiti and Lady Bird. But these personal passion projects are more typically made by filmmakers at the height of their powers, like Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Spike Lee’s Crooklyn (Kenneth Branagh even threw his hat in the ring this season with Belfast).
Paul Thomas Anderson is the latest A-lister to transport us to the land of his youth. With Licorice Pizza, the filmmaker paints a loving portrait of his native San Fernando Valley in 1973. You can easily imagine the giddiness on Anderson’s face as he arrived on set each day to see the gorgeous recreations of the clothes, cars, and restaurants of his childhood. He captures the purple haze of LA dusk on gorgeously-grainy 35 mm film. Yet the film never feels particularly self-indulgent, because while its visual aesthetic has a warm rose-colored tint, Anderson’s writing is clear-eyed and sober. It’s not an overromanticized tribute to the ‘70s Valley, it’s an honest portrayal of a chaotic time and place that juxtaposes stylistic beauty with moral rot.
The film depicts the Valley as the rat-racetrack for the Hollywood-industrial complex. It’s imagined as a playground for the haves by the starry-eyed have-nots, but it’s immediately clear that everybody’s trying to sell something and buy something else, regardless of wealth and social stature. Our guides through the sun-kissed labyrinth are dual protagonists who embody its spirit: Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) and Alana Kane (Alana Haim). Gary’s acting career has earned him a small fortune and moderate local celebrity status, which allow him to become the perfect embodiment of the quintessential PTA hustler character: a selfish, smooth-talking grifter selling the world junk it neither asked for nor needs. He’s cut from the same cloth as oil maniac Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood and motivational speaker/incel whisperer Frank TJ Mackey from Magnolia, with one with a couple of key distinctions. The first is that he hasn’t gotten high on his own supply and bought into his own bullshit like those creeps, and has no belief in his products beyond their ability to make him a quick buck. And the second is the reason his character is a comedic force instead of a tragic one: he’s fifteen years old. Gary is disarmingly adultish for his age –– he’s a proud child actor who chit-chats with restaurant owners and divorced casting agents as if they’ve been pals for decades. Almost everything he says is inherently funny because of the tension between his verbal maturity and unignorable youthfulness –– if his lines were delivered by someone who’s actually as old as Gary wants to be, they’d be uninteresting or even creepy, but since he’s just a kid, there’s humor baked into every sentence.
The wunderkind waterbed and pinball pusher lands spiritually between two Anderson characters played by the actor’s late father, Philip Seymour Hoffman: mattress/phone sex kingpin Dean Trumbell in Punch-Drunk Love and cult leader Lancastar Dodd in The Master. As Gary, the younger Hoffman channels Trumbell’s unashamed, aggressive arrogance, as well as his ability to make a phone conversation into comedy gold without having to utter a word. Yet he also possesses Dodd’s perplexing soulfulness: full of hyperarticulate, soft-spoken romanticism that simultaneously seems utterly genuine and completely phony. Aspects of his physicality evoke his father’s great performances (of which there are many): dynamic but unflashy gesticulating, lip-rubbing, forehead-holding, and a whole lot of thoughtful squinting. Yet Hoffman isn’t a mere clone of his dad, he’s a great performer in his own right, imbuing the character with youthful innocence, naturalistic stammering, and unique swagger that only a first-time actor could provide.
Alana Kane is Gary’s best friend, chaperone, crush, and partner-in-crime. She’s more chameleonic than her counterpart, contorting her personality into shapes that don’t quite fit in hopes of impressing the right people that can give her a leg up in the entertainment industry. It never seems like she has a particular passion for showbusiness –– she covets the social status that comes with “making it” rather than the artistry or the wealth. In one of the film’s funniest scenes, she insists that she can do anything a potential acting gig might require of her, making preposterous claims that she can speak Latin and play every sport in an attempt to woo an eccentric talent scout. Throughout the film, she demonstrates a subtler malleability –– she puts up a faux-mature facade in her interactions with Gary, but acts like the baby of her tightly-knit family (played by Haim’s real parents and sisters), and adopts an overly-flirtatious, aloof sexy-baby-voice when trying to sell waterbeds or win a movie role. Even her age is in flux –– she tells Gary she’s “twenty…five” (with a big pause in the middle), but claims she’s 28 to older suitors.
Haim’s spellbinding performance couldn’t be better, as the first-time actress expertly navigates the constantly-shifting modes and moods of her character. Her frequent irritation with Gary and her sisters is hilarious, and the incidents where she’s betrayed by trusted allies are heartbreaking. But her most exhilarating moments come when Alana transitions between different personas and motivations –– the moments when she switches her sales technique from disinterest to pseudohorniness, or struggles to keep up her flirtatiousness with a much-older costar when she sees Gary across the restaurant, or decides to start running instead of walking toward her friend. Perhaps the most powerful scene comes after a brilliantly-edited truck chase and a tense encounter with Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper), when Alana feels shaken by the unnecessary trauma she’s been through and disgusted by Gary’s immaturity in the face of danger. Haim doesn’t speak and doesn’t really cry, but the complex inner workings of her brain play out on her face as she resolves to pursue a more grown-up endeavor. It’s fascinating to watch her think.
Neither character is presented as a heroic force for good, nor is their relationship framed in a particularly flattering light. It’s as complicated, messy, and transactional as any core Andersonian relationship. Alana values the material benefits of Gary’s social capital and appreciates that his youth allows her to seem mature and cool in the face of her insecure aimlessness, while Gary sees Alana as an object of adolescent lust, and as a symbol that validates his outward maturity. They use each other for personal gain, and elegantly represent Hollywood’s troubling attitudes toward age –– showbiz creates precocious kids who act like adults, and never wants women to seem like they’re over 25. Yet there’s something genuinely pure about their persistent loyalty in the middle of a town that so sorely lacks it, as they show up for each other when nobody else does.
Anderson’s supporting cast doubles down on his vision of the entertainment industry as a slimy hellhole devoid of sympathy and taste. Cooper is a manifestation of uncontrollable celebrity id, Sean Penn’s aging actor showcases the ridiculous obliviousness of stardom, Christine Ebersole’s Lucille Ball analogue physically assaults a kid, and Benny Safdie’s closeted politician is simultaneously a tragic victim of prejudice and a self-interested manipulator. And, ironically fittingly for a movie about the murky networking of showbusiness, the rest of the cast is populated by performers with nepotistic connections to industry heavyweights: Anderson’s spouse Maya Rudolph and their children appear briefly, as do more Hoffman kids, a couple of Spielbergs, Leonardo DiCaprio’s dad George, Jack Nicholson’s son Ray, and a few children of composer Michael Giacchino.
The one supporting scumbag character that doesn’t entirely work is John Michael Higgins’ restaurant owner, whose presence seems intended to represent the casual racism of the era. The attempt to confront racist behavior is understandable when you consider all the other cruelty that Anderson disapprovingly includes throughout the movie, but the particular scenes with Higgins’ character are more clunkily executed than almost anything the director has created. It’s a weird move to have two of the only women of color in the movie exclusively dedicated to making a white guy look like a buffoon, especially since their scenes are made redundant by later ones where Penn’s character swiftly shows racist undertones anyway. It’s a disappointingly off-kilter facet to a film that’s incredibly successful in nearly every other regard. It’s an exemplary coming-of-age hangout comedy from one of American cinema’s strongest voices, and few films achieve such a unique blend of humor, aesthetics, and thoughtful character work.
