In Licorice pizza, age is a lovely, indefinite number – as glorious and undefined as the name. It has a unique odour that we can't put our fingers on or explain; worse, we know it would disintegrate if we tried. In truth, Licorice pizza is a slang term for vinyl records, owing to the dulcet tone and shape of the records. There's also the fact that those initials, LP, are there. However, we don't need to know any of this to enjoy this pleasant, sunny, enjoyable, and compassionate portrayal of two individuals who are always in the in-betweens: in-between years, in-between careers, in-between adolescence and adulthood, in-between adulthood and maturation.
Licorice pizza is Anderson's most relaxed and pleasant film, with few clouds on the horizon. Indeed, there is no question that Alana (Haim) and Gary (Hoffman) — as opposite as they are — are intended for each other from the moment we see them go down a row of school kids primped for their school photos. He is a precocious 15-year-old with various side hustles, including a minor acting career that he is rapidly outgrowing both in years and size. She is a 25-year-old trapped in a thankless job of preparing school teens for their yearbook photos; she is a precocious 15-year-old with various hustles on the side, including a minor acting career that he is quickly outgrowing both in years and size.
Licorice pizza is set in Encino, a Los Angeles neighbourhood just close enough to live with hollywood while yet dreaming about it. From ageing stars living in their glory days to bad-behaving movie moguls, from the Middle east crisis and oil shortages to a mayoral election, from a false arrest to a needlessly racially insensitive American with a string of Japanese wives, and from amazingly absent parents to an annoyingly interfering Jewish father Some of these sequences work, but the majority do not. And Anderson isn't afraid to bring up the creeping sexist behaviour of the time (the 1970s), with a particularly vexing sequence in which Alana spends the day in a bikini at a shop selling water beds.
Licorice pizza is Anderson's most relaxed and pleasant film, with few clouds on the horizon. Indeed, there is no question that Alana (Haim) and Gary (Hoffman) — as opposite as they are — are intended for each other from the moment we see them go down a row of school kids primped for their school photos. He is a precocious 15-year-old with various side hustles, including a minor acting career that he is rapidly outgrowing both in years and size. She is a 25-year-old trapped in a thankless job of preparing school teens for their yearbook photos; she is a precocious 15-year-old with various hustles on the side, including a minor acting career that he is quickly outgrowing both in years and size.
Licorice pizza is set in Encino, a Los Angeles neighbourhood just close enough to live with hollywood while yet dreaming about it. From ageing stars living in their glory days to bad-behaving movie moguls, from the Middle east crisis and oil shortages to a mayoral election, from a false arrest to a needlessly racially insensitive American with a string of Japanese wives, and from amazingly absent parents to an annoyingly interfering Jewish father Some of these sequences work, but the majority do not. And Anderson isn't afraid to bring up the creeping sexist behaviour of the time (the 1970s), with a particularly vexing sequence in which Alana spends the day in a bikini at a shop selling water beds.
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