LICORICE PIZZA (2021) ★

There's a disdain for the past that burned through my experience of seeing "Licorice Pizza," and it was an unpleasant enough aspect of the film that it ruined it for me. One might mistakenly think that writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson's cinematic rendition of 1973 in the San Fernando Valley is based on the 52 year-old's personal impressions, but he's too young to have remembered any details of the time period that he depicts. What he offers instead is a bizarre reimagining of the landscape. This isn't a 1973 of women married by 25 and teens with weed and rock music on the brain. This is bizarro 1973, where a 25 year-old single Jewish woman is hectored with obscenities by her Jewish dad for coming home late (and where apparently only Jews are circumcised), where the 1978 Chris Norman and Suzi Quatro song "Stumblin' In" is on the airwaves, where California police send their collars cross-country to Attica, and where teenagers are so well-adjusted that they start businesses at the drop of a hat. 

Even the little things are off: diners are smoke-free, jacket-required restaurants admit young adults in T-shirts and jeans, and airlines upholster their seats in a tasteful 2000s shade of navy blue. None of this jives, but what bugged me even more were the societal iniquities that Anderson carefully inserted into this world, things like men slapping women's butts with impunity, and even a hotel owner imitating his Japanese wife's accent every time he speaks to her, which I found to be as unrealistic as it was offensive. A story is only as strong as its two supporting pillars of character and conflict, and Anderson's are shaky at best. Alana Kane (Irish surname, yet she's Jewish) is wooed by Gary Valentine on school picture day. Alana, played by musician Alana Haim, works for the photo company, and Gary is a student. She's 25, and he's ten years her junior, but that doesn't stop Gary, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman's son Cooper, from asking her out to dinner, an invitation she accepts. This sets the stage for a romance nobody should be rooting for. 

What transpires beyond that is a series of events with varying degrees of awkwardness, from Alana chaperoning Gary on a press tour, where she meets and develops a crush on another kid who is way too young for her, to her chasing a wrongfully-arrested Gary to a police station, where the two embrace in what is meant to be a meaningful moment between them. But why is it meaningful? Alana is too old for Gary, and Gary is too old for Gary. After a scene where he flirts with and charms a beautiful stewardess, his unending struggle to win over the dowdy and difficult Miss Kane seems pointless. Why not make Gary a few years older than Alana? I found myself daydreaming that he was written as a failing middle-aged entrepreneur instead of a pimply-faced child, and Alana is depicted as his savior. But in Anderson's film their ambiguous relationship catapults them into a waterbed sales operation, the finances and supply-chain for which are just as ambiguous. When they have a promo meeting with hotel owner Jerry Frick (John Michael Higgins), Gary introduces Alana as his "lady friend," which she corrects to "business partner." Despite their attraction to one another, they define their union in terms that neither of them have agreed upon. How are audiences supposed to understand their relationship if they can't figure it out? 

Anderson's conflict isn't the one he intended. We're meant to believe that the sexual tension undergirding everything is based on Gary's bumbles, but Alana is clearly the lost one. She agrees to do nudity in movies, an offer only retracted by Gary's scruples. She curses profusely, a habit picked up from dad. She seeks validation from her sisters, who humor her despite their obvious misgivings. She tells people, "I think it's weird that I hang out with Gary and his fifteen year-old friends all the time." I agree. Not only is it weird, it's borderline criminal. Gary presides over her career and her conscience. She lies to agents and producers for jobs at his bequest. He makes her jealous, but grown men bore her, even when one of them is A-list actor Jack Holden, played by Sean Penn. Alana is a sad husk of a woman, and awfully young to be that way. 

I have no idea how this film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. "Licorice Pizza" is a greasy little picture that inhabits a no-man's land for stories that are poorly written, poorly acted, and poorly directed. It isn't populated with culturally coherent characters, as its family of Israeli Jews apparently acquired their potty-mouths from the pubs of Ireland. Anderson makes basic cultural errors in his portrayal of Judaism, the kinds of goofs that aren't easy to overlook. In a scene where Alana's family sings their blessing over Shabbat candles, the actors sing the song for the lighting of Hanukkah candles instead. This came off as sloppy to me, and the cursing was just as unnecessary and unbelievable. It isn't a convincing period piece, as many of its period-specific details are either anachronistic or absent entirely. Its narrative is disjointed and bewildering. It isn't funny, and it's unclear if it's meant to be. It's also far too long, clocking in at a tedious 133 minutes, and had me looking at my watch. 

The fact that this tripe is considered one of America's best depresses me. How has our culture deteriorated this badly? Was it Vietnam? Watergate? The Gulf War? 9/11? I would rather watch an eight-hour documentary about any one of those things than sit through "Licorice Pizza" again. 

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